Chapter 3 Henry the Peaceable: Henry III, Alexander III and Royal Lordship in the British Isles, 1249-1272 Michael Brown Never did any of the English or British kings, in any past time, keep his pledges more faithfully or more steadfastly than this Henry; for, nearly the whole time of his reign, he was looked upon by the kings of Scotland, father and son, as their most faithful neighbour and adviser ... I The thirteenth-century source used by John de Fordun for his Chronica Gentis Scotorum preserved a view of Henry III which contrasted with its hostility to his father and son. This verdict has generally been followed by later Scottish historians who have presented the reign as a period of peace and stability in the relationship between the two internationally-recognised kingdoms of the British Isles. By comparison with events after 1290 this is undeniable. Peaceful relations with Henry have been used as the external backdrop to the Scottish kings' furthest extension of their lordship and the definition of Scotland as a separate unit of ecclesiastical and secular authority. However, there remain limits to our understanding of the relationship between Henry III and the Scots. The contacts, tensions and rivalries between the two royal lordships were complex and shifting, especially between the accession of Alexander III and the death of Henry III. The years from 1249 to 1272 witnessed changes of major significance across the British Isles. They were not external to Scotland. Relationships between kings, princes and communities in these islands and on the continent provided the wider framework for Scottish politics. This chapter examines the experience of Scotland's monarchy and community against the interplay of these relationships, the most important of which were the policies and ambitions of Henry III.2 Henry's attitude to Scotland assumed an exceptional importance from 1249. The death of King Alexander II of Scotland altered the character and balance of politics in the northern British Isles. An ambitious and able adult was replaced by a child of eight years. The new king, Alexander III, could not be expected to exercise personal royal lordship for a decade and the absence of royal direction put exceptional strains on the political elites of the Scottish realm. In the circumstances of a minority, many members of this elite regarded Henry III as a source of legitimacy and guidance. Their attitude and Henry's involvement in Scotland after 1249 were shaped by the existing relationship between the two realms. 44 England and Europe in the Reign of Henry III This relationship was not between two entirely separate political units. Its character was shaped by the numerous contacts and overlaps which linked the Scottish king and his realm with the Plantagenet dominions. Most concrete of these were ties of landholding. A significant group of magnates held lands in both kingdoms and the kings of Scots were also English barons. They were lords of Tynedale and of the earldom of Huntingdon and possessed claims to Northumberland, Westmoreland and Cumberland. These claims had a major impact on the relations between Henry III and Alexander II. Between 1215 and 1217, Alexander had pursued his claim to these lands by war and, though he never resorted to arms again, he continued to see possession of these English lordships as a key element of his relations with England. He sought them by diplomacy during the 1220s but once again threatened war on the issue in 1234-1235. The danger Alexander posed was not as an invader. In 1215 he acted as a lord denied his just rights and was accepted as the leader of the northern English rebels. The overlapping interests of the two realms in the north could encourage peace, but also served as a cause of tension. The settlement of the Scottish king's claims at York in 1237 was a recognition of the importance of the issue.3 There were more advantages than simply the avoidance of war in the north to be had from the Scottish king's friendship. During the 1220s, Alexander II worked closely with Henry III's government. Friendship between the kings rested on personal bonds. In July 1221 Alexander married Henry's sister, Joan and, as late as 1231, there were plans for a marriage between Henry himself and Alexander's youngest sister, Margaret. However, the crucial marriage was between Alexander's elder sister (another Margaret) and Hubert de Burgh, justiciar of England and leading figure in the young Henry's government. This marriage, which occurred at the same time as Alexander's own, secured the Scottish king's support, political, military and financial, for the minority regime in England. Between 1223 and 1225, de Burgh's government faced a powerful coalition of enemies throughout the British Isles. In Ireland, Hugh de Lacy with considerable Gaelic support was seeking to recover the earldom of Ulster and forged alliances with Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, prince of Gwynedd and the latter's neighbour, Ranulf, earl of Chester. In this crisis Alexander II aided his brother-in-law, de Burgh. In 1223 he promised Hubert that he would allow no help to reach de Lacy from Scotland and, later in the year, was at Worcester for the opening of the royal campaign in Wales which brought Llywelyn's submission. Alexander's presence signified symbolic, not military support, but he probably sanctioned the intended expedition of his constable, Alan of Galloway, to Ulster the next year. Though this was forestalled by a settlement with de Lacy, the Scottish king had given steady aid to the royal government in its greatest crisis of the 1220s. Alexander's assistance also came in the form of money. In 1225 he gave £1000 to help finance the expedition being sent to defend Gascony against Louis VIII of France and in 1230 he raised an aid of 2000 marks to support Henry's campaign to recover Plantagenet lands and influence in Brittany and Poitou. This latter grant was specifically recorded as a gesture of goodwill not a precedent, but the two subsidies were probably recalled by Henry as further benefits of Scottish support. 4 However, such advantages proceeded from friendship not dominion and, when de Burgh fell from power in 1231-1232, the friendship ended. Alexander saw his Royal Lordship in the British Isles, 1249-1272 45 sister rejected as Henry's bride and sheltered de Burgh and his associates. The rest of Alexander II's reign would not witness a return to the close relations between the two royal governments of the 1220s. The possibility of a royal marriage for his sister, which would have involved a final amicable settlement of Alexander's territorial claims in northern England and brought the Scottish king prestige and influence in England, was over. Alexander renewed his claim for a full coronation at the papal curia, which he had not pressed between 1221 and 1233, and, during the next five years, adopted a belligerent stance towards Henry IIJ.S Between 1232 and 1237, instead of supporting the English king's authority against his opponents, Alexander exploited such opposition to put pressure on his royal brother-in-law. He entered an alliance with Richard Marshal, earl of Pembroke and lord of Leinster, in 1234 during the earl's revolt against Henry. Llywelyn ap lorwerth was also allied to Marshal, and the English king was faced with a potential coalition of the leading prince of native Wales, the greatest lord in the Welsh Marches and English Ireland and the king of Scots. The connection survived Marshal's death in battle in 1234. The next year Richard's brother and successor, Gilbert, married Margaret, Alexander's jilted sister, receiving extensive Scottish lands. Though the match had Henry III's consent, in 1236 Alexander used it to threaten the English king, proposing to wage war against him with the help of Gilbert Marshal and Llywelyn of Gwynedd. 6 Instead of war, these tensions led to the treaty of York in 1237 and the settlement of Alexander's claims in the far north of England. It is a mistake to see this agreement as the resolution of Anglo-Scottish tensions. In the early 1240s a new dispute brought the kings to the brink of war. While the north of England was the setting for the main confrontation, the clash concerned a range of issues and the general relations between the two kings. Henry had given Alexander authority over the far north and custody of Newcastle when he departed for France in 1242. He was treating the Scottish king as a friend, and the latter's activities in the region were not a direct cause of the crisis in their relationship. This occurred inside Scotland where the murder of a Scottish noble, Patrick of Atholl, by his enemies, the Bisset family, in 1242 provoked an aristocratic coalition led by Walter and Alexander Comyn, the earls of Menteith and Buchan, Patrick, earl of Dunbar and William, earl of Mar. Although he intervened in favour of Walter Bisset and his kin, King Alexander was forced to bow to the pressure of these magnates and exile the accused. 7 This was a conflict between Alexander's vassals within his realm and did not impinge directly on the dominions of Henry III. Henry's intervention in the dispute demonstrated that the English king did not view his rights as Alexander's lord as being confined to the latter's role as a baron in England. Walter Bisset approached Henry in Gascony. He asked for the king's help, not as Alexander's neighbour but as his lord. Bisset claimed that, as Henry's vassal, Alexander had no right to disinherit men without his lord's permission. He levelled other charges against the Scottish king. Alexander was said to be harbouring Henry's rebel, Geoffrey Marsh. Marsh was a former partisan of Richard Marshal, Alexander's former ally, and his link to the Scottish king recalled this earlier confrontation. The Scottish king was further accused of fortifying the Scottish border and planning to ally with Henry's French enemies after his marriage, in 1239, to the daughter of Enguerrand de Couci, a major vassal of Louis IX of France. According to Matthew Paris, the final spark came when Alexander responded to Henry's accusations by 46 England and Europe in the Reign of Henry Ill stating that 'not even a particle of the kingdom of Scotland did he hold of the king of England' .s From April 1244, Henry prepared a military expedition against Alexander on a considerable scale. His preparations were not motivated by a desire to establish direct lordship over the Scottish realm, by immediate fear of a military alliance between Louis IX and Alexander II, or even by anxiety about the Scottish king's ambitions in the north. Instead Henry's aim was to make a forceful but general point about the status of the king of Scots. Henry had given Alexander authority in the far north of England as his vassal and agent, but Alexander had encouraged castle-building in the marches of his own realm, received Henry's enemies into his own protection and formed links with the English king's continental rivals. In return, Henry was appealed to for redress by lords exiled from Scotland. In all these issues Henry believed he possessed rights as Alexander's lord. Although this lordship related formally only to the latter's lands in England, to Henry it also implied general obligations of friendship and support from the vassal to his superior, obligations which did not stop at the Anglo-Scottish border. These were nebulous but significant for the English king and he probably regarded Alexander's actions as violating them. Henry's campaign of 1244 had the aim of forcing Alexander to acknowledge his position, while the Scottish king regarded himself as defending his rights as ruler of a realm which lay firmly outside Henry's authority. The speedy settlement arrived at between the two armies outside Newcastle in early August represented a compromise. Alexander promised to 'preserve good faith . . . and love' to his 'liege lord' Henry and neither ally with the king's enemies or 'stir up or make war' which would harm the English king or his dominions. In return Alexander gained Henry's recognition of his own right to make marriages, though it was also agreed to a match between his new-born son, the future Alexander III, and Henry's daughter, Margaret. Henry had obtained an agreement which placed limits on Alexander's future behaviour. Though Alexander gave away nothing from his rights as king of Scots, after the events of the preceding decade it was a not insignificant statement of his political position.9 Given his preparations, Henry may have wished to press the issue further. His readiness to negotiate was probably not the product of his 'gentle heart' but of wider problems. Many northern English magnates had an interest in preventing open warfare between the kings and it was probably whilst Henry was in the north that he received news that almost the whole of native Wales was in arms against him. His efforts to raise fresh resources to deal with this more direct challenge would play a part in sparking a political crisis in England during the autumn. Not for the first or last time, the Scots benefited from being only one of the manifold concerns and problems of the Plantagenets. 10 The confrontation of 1244 was linked directly to such wider concerns, not just for Henry but also for Alexander. Despite the Welsh war of 1244-1245, events in the British Isles during the preceding decade appeared to favour Henry. The deaths of Llywelyn ap lorwerth of Gwynedd in 1240 and of Gilbert Marshal in 1241 deprived Alexander of his allies of the previous decade and may have encouraged Henry's bellicose attitude. However, the influence and authority of both kings away from their royal heartlands had been increasing during the years before the crisis. Henry's position in Wales was greatly strengthened by a series of deaths in the house of Gwynedd and the division of their principality between the sons and Royal Lordship in the British Isles, 1249-1272 47 grandsons ofLlywelyn ap Iorwerth, while the king's authority in the Welsh Marches and the lordship of Ireland was increased by a series of deaths amongst his magnates which Jed to the final extinction of the Marshal family in 1245 and the de Lacys in 1241-1242. The reach, resources and relative power of royal government in Wales and Ireland rose to levels not attained since King John's activities in the west between 1209 and 1212. However, the 1230s also saw the further and steady extension of Scottish royal lordship into the west and north of the mainland. In terms of the relations between Henry III and Alexander II, the crucial events were the deaths of Alan, lord of Galloway, in 1234 and of Hugh de Lacy, earl of Ulster, in 1242. These magnates acted as the agents of the two royal governments and as great lords, rivals and allies in the lands and seas on each side of the North Channel. Following their deaths without recognised male heirs, the kings ensured their own authority was established in the earldom of Ulster and the lordship of Galloway. As a result, for the first time, royal officials, Henry's bailies in Ulster and Alexander's justiciar of Galloway and sheriff of Wigtown, faced each other across the narrow seas. In the 1240s the channel became a clear frontier between the two royal lordships of the British Isles for the first time. II The interests of the two crowns in this region often coincided. In particular, there were mutual anxieties about the activities of the Hebridean magnates. These lords held lands in western Scotland as well as the Isles, and their interests as allies and mercenaries extended to Gaelic Ireland. They were, therefore, a threat to both kings' interests. However, in 1244 this new borderland of royal lordships added to the tensions. Scottish attacks on Ireland were one of the charges levelled against Alexander in that year and Henry sought to raise an expedition from English and Gaelic vassals in his lordship to threaten south-west Scotland. In the settlement at Newcastle, Alexander and his men specifically promised not to stir up trouble in Ireland, but disturbances in Ulster and around the Clyde continued. These clashes were not the direct product of royal competition. Instead they had much to do with the continuing feuds over the Galloway inheritance which spanned the North Channel. It was the murder of the last male member of the house of Galloway, Alan's nephew, Patrick of Atholl, which had sparked the whole crisis. Local warfare between Patrick's killers, the Bissets, and the dead man 's half-brother, Alan, son of the Earl, began in 1243 and lasted until 1248. Patrick raided his enemies' lands in Ulster and Walter and John Bisset seized and fortified the castle of Dunaverty in Kintyre, which Alan then took by siege. Henry III had deliberately employed the Bissets in Ulster and in 1248 allowed John to buy corn from the earldom to provision Dunaverty. Alexander II's relations with Alan are less clear but the latter clearly had powerful friends amongst the Bissets' aristocratic enemies.12 More directly, Alexander went straight from the settlement at Newcastle into a sustained attempt to extend his rule to the west of his kingdom. The Isles, from Man to Lewis, were under the lordship of the king of Norway, Hakon IV, the third sovereign royal lord in the British Isles. Though distant from this western province, Hakon's influence in the Isles was far from negligible and had been maintained by recent expeditions. When Alexander II tried to buy King Hakon's rights in the region, he was rebuffed. In response, Alexander launched a military expedition to Argyll and the Isles. The principal aim of this was to force the magnates of the Hebrides, and, in particular, Ewen MacDougall of Lorn, to recognise Alexander's 48 England and Europe in the Reign of Henry Ill authority beyond the shores of his kingdom. The campaign was a direct assault on Hakon's rights and a forceful attempt to shift the boundaries between the different kingdoms in the British Isles. It was criticised by contemporaries and must have been unwelcome to Henry III too. The English crown enjoyed friendly relations with the kings of Norway and Henry had no reason to wish Hakon's lordship replaced by that of the Scottish king. His particular concern was the status of Man and its kings. Henry had maintained long-standing bonds with the rulers of the island. During the 1230s and 1240s, Henry had guaranteed the security of Man and rewarded its king, Harald, for his role in safeguarding the seas between England and Ireland. The English king's role as patron and ally was signified by Henry's knighting of Harald in 1246. The death of King Harald, drowned as he returned from Norway as Hakon's designated deputy in the whole of the Isles, left Man without a ruler and weakened the Norwegian king's ability to oppose Alexander in the west. In connection with events in Ulster, Henry III must have worried about his own interests in the region in the face of the Scottish king's ambitions. 13 Alongside such territorial tensions were other issues. During the later 1240s, Alexander II once again sought the right to receive full coronation from the curia.' 4 Henry's agents blocked the request by claiming that the Scottish king was his vassal. It was an argument which lay at the heart of Henry's attitude to Scotland. The English king intervened in Scottish affairs rarely. For the most part, he recognised Alexander's rights to rule over his realm. However, Henry was sensitive to perceived challenges to his own status and to his interests in the British Isles. The king of Scots was one of many great lords on the fringes of his rule from Foix and Beam in the Pyrenees northwards, with whom he had to maintain a working relationship. In dealing with Alexander II, Henry could not ignore these wider concerns. Time and again relations with the Scottish king had become involved with Plantagenet interests in the rest of the British Isles and on the continent. By securing recognition of his rights as Alexander's lord, Henry sought to prevent Scottish support for disaffected Welsh or English magnates, to guarantee the interests of his friends and vassals in the northern British Isles and even gain access to the resources of the Scottish realm as during the 1220s. Alexander's actions suggest a very different perspective. Though aware of his duties as an English baron, he regarded himself as Henry's equal more than his vassal and the settlement of 1244 had not limited Alexander's quest for greater rights, either ideological or territorial. The tension between these two positions had emerged repeatedly during the three decades before 1249 and, unlike the territorial dispute over northern England, had not been resolved. In its context, news of Alexander II's death in the Isles cannot have been unwelcome to Henry III. The absence of an adult king of Scots meant that he possessed new advantages in his dealings with Scotland during the decade from 1249. However, it is striking that his aims and objectives did not alter fundamentally from the earlier years of his reign. On two occasions after 1249 Henry came north to exert personal influence on Scotland. Both interventions, in 1251 and 1255, saw Henry act as an arbitrator with considerable, declared Scottish support. Henry was not hungry to exploit the weakness of the Scottish realm under a child king. Two years passed from the death of Alexander II before Henry became directly involved in Scottish politics. The end of Alexander's ambitions had reduced Henry's need to consider his relations with Scotland. When formal contacts occurred they centred, Royal Lordship in the British Isles, 1249-1272 49 not on earlier tensions, but on the renewal of ties between the two royal houses through the marriage of the young Alexander III to Henry's daughter, Margaret. This was not simply an external alliance. The wedding of the couple at York over Christmas 1251 was used as a display of Henry's personal lordship over his son-inlaw. On Christmas Day the young king was knighted by Henry. The next morning (St Stephen's Day) the young couple was married. During the next week Alexander remained in York, performing homage for his English lands. He was also reportedly asked to pay homage to Henry for Scotland. This request was rejected and Henry did not press the issue. Instead he stressed that nothing at York prejudiced Alexander's rights in his realm. Though he registered a claim to lordship over Scotland, Henry's chief concern was to establish a less defined superiority over Alexander. Thus, the knighting of the king of Scots was not demanded as a right but marked Alexander's 'reverence and honour to so great a prince'. Whilst at York, Henry oversaw the removal of Alexander's chief advisers, including the justiciar, Alan Durward. His statement that this did not form a precedent did not remove its significance. By issuing pardons to outlaws at the request of his daughter and son-in-law, by entertaining his guests in lavish style and by being asked for, and giving judgement in the rivalries between Alexander's councillors, Henry was acting as the young king's protector, demonstrating a personal relationship between them in which he was the patron. IS Though Scottish suspicions remained, as Alexander's father by marriage and in chivalry, Henry had formed new justifications for exerting influence on Scotland. His concerns for the health and safety of the royal couple were a significant factor and valuable justification for Henry's second intervention in Scottish politics in 1255. Though accompanied by an armed escort, Henry chose to keep the majority of his English supporters outside Scotland. He relied on diplomacy, surprise and the actions of his Scottish adherents. Once again Henry was taking a limited approach as the protector of Alexander, his 'chief adviser' not his superior lord. Although the expedition witnessed Henry's one entry into Scotland, on 20 September 1255, when he rode to meet Alexander and Margaret at Roxburgh, he stated on that day that, once again, the rights of the king had not been reduced by his intervention. The visit of the Scottish king and queen to Henry's court during July 1256 reaffirmed the bonds of kinship which were central to the English king's claims to a greater role in Scotland.l6 Though personal obligations were an important factor in Henry's dealings with Scotland, the king's attitudes were also driven by material objectives. In particular, Henry sought Scottish support for his interests across the British Isles and Western Europe. The Scottish marriage was the least spectacular of a series of dynastic plans designed to extend Henry's network of kin and allies. These plans would mark a shift in the king's goals and was signalled by Henry's decision to take the cross in March 1250. This would be superseded by the efforts to secure the imperial title for Henry's brother, Richard, and the Sicilian throne for his son, Edmund. These objectives required huge funds. Henry's search for resources has long been recognised as a cause in the political crisis which erupted in England in 1258. It also formed a major element in Henry's relationship with Scotland during the years when that realm lacked a king. Even before the marriage of Alexander and Margaret, Henry had approached the pope seeking an extension of the ecclesiastical tax he 50 England and Europe in the Reign of Henry lli had been given to include Scotland. In April 1251 Innocent IV rejected this request as 'unheard of in another's kingdom'. However, after the marriage Henry anticipated that Scottish support would materialise for his schemes as in 1225 and 1230 as a result of his influence with the new councillors. Between July 1253 and December 1254, Henry was on the continent. His principal aim was to secure his hold on Gascony. Faced by local opposition led by Gaston de Beam who had support from the king of Castile, Henry sought military support from his vassals and allies. In late 1253 he wrote to the king of Scots asking him to summon the prelates and magnates of his kingdom in late February to meet Henry's envoys from Gascony. Henry hoped that the Scots would give him 'council and aid' in his 'arduous and urgent affairs'. He asked for this help 'by reason of the bond and alliance concluded between us which requires that we make known to you and your liegemen all arduous and urgent matters touching our estate, and you to us in return'. The English king was making a request as a friend and kinsman not a demand as lord, but must have expected support. His success is hard to gauge but was probably less than he had hoped. Several knights associated with Alexander's councillors served Henry in Gascony in 1254, but the greatest impression was made by their enemy, Alan Durward. Durward used his presence to make a point about the limited aid the council had sent to their royal sponsor,l7 Limited aid from the council for Henry was a factor in his growing hostility to the men around the Scottish king during 1255. At the same time, Henry's need for Scottish financial aid had suddenly increased. During 1254 he had negotiated an agreement with the pope by which his son would be invested with the Sicilian throne. In return Henry would pay over £90,000 to the papacy and finance a Mediterranean war. He received papal assistance in efforts to raise the money. Innocent ordered the Scottish clergy to raise money for the English king. In May 1254 a twentieth of Scottish ecclesiastical incomes was assigned to Henry for the next three years and in 1255 the levy was extended for three more years. After Gascony, Henry may have had doubts about the willingness of the Scots to raise funds for his needs. The intervention of September 1255 was designed in part to form a council which was more responsive to these needs. By early 1256, serious efforts were being made to raise clerical taxation in Scotland. Once again Henry declared that this did not prejudice the Scottish king's rights and the pope instructed his agent to persuade the Scottish prelates to contribute either through taxation or by informal contributions. However the chaplain was also told to keep silent concerning the privileges and independence of the Scottish church, suggesting papal awareness that these rights were being trespassed upon. IS The ambitious marriage diplomacy which accompanied Henry's European schemes also affected Scotland. The marriage of Henry's elder son, Edward to Eleanor, sister of the king of Castile, was designed to secure Gascony and attract a crusading ally. By 1255 Henry may have hoped to win Castilian support for the conquest of Sicily and these plans involved him in dealing with a ruler much closer to Scotland. Around 1255-1256 negotiations were opened for a marriage between Henry's daughter, Beatrice, and Magnus, eldest son of Hakon IV, king of Norway. A second match between Hakon's daughter and the brother of the king of Castile was also sponsored by Henry. Henry hoped that Hakon, who had also taken the cross, would divert his fleet from the Holy Land to Sicily. This planned alliance between the Royal Lordship in the British Isles, 1249-1272 51 kings of England and Norway had an obvious significance for the Scottish realm, especially in the isles and coastlands of the west where all three kingdoms met. 19 The extension of the Scottish crown's influence into the Hebrides had come to a sudden halt with Alexander II's death. The early 1250s saw Henry and Hakon take a much more influential role in the region, combining to remove local threats. The most obvious of these was the attempt by Magnus, brother of the drowned King Harald of Man, to seize the island from rival claimants. In 1250 Magnus allied with Ewen MacDougall, the leading Hebridean magnate and in 1251 he sought Irish aid but he failed to impose his rule by force. Henry III ordered action against what he saw as the invasion of 'the lands of the king of Norway' . It was only by recognising the lordship of the two kings that Magnus obtained his lands. In 1253 he departed for Norway having placed himself under Henry's protection. With the English king's sponsorship, Magnus was 'honourably received' by Hakon and in 1254 returned to be accepted as king by the Manxmen. He was not the only westerner at Hakon's court. Ewen MacDougall and his cousin, Dugald MacRuairi of Garmoran, were also present, indicating the Norwegian king's influence. 20 Henry's intervention in Scotland in September 1255 was marked by his increased interference in the west, as in other areas. His desire to further his own and Hakon's interests was clearly in his mind. On 21 September, the day after the new Scottish council had been appointed, Henry placed Ewen MacDougall under his protection. The king promised to ensure that Ewen was not permanently deprived of his Scottish lordship in Lorn in northern Argyll, taken from him in 1249. Henry was protecting an Islesman who had received Hakon's favour, mirroring the relations between Magnus of Man and the two kings. The following Easter this relationship was further enhanced when Magnus attended Henry's court and was knighted by the English king. The new authority of the Norwegian king in the west was reflected by a reference to him being made king 'over all the isles which his predecessors had held' in a northern English chronicle.2I By cooperating with Hakon in the Isles, Henry probably hoped to win that king's aid in his wider ambitions. However, the influence and friendship he established with the Scottish and Norwegian kings allowed Henry to hold the balance in this sensitive maritime zone. His aims were the prevention of conflicts which would threaten the stability and balance of the region and he sought to achieve them by regulating the status of island magnates, supporting those who recognised his influence. Those who did not accept Henry's personal lordship faced the hostility of all three kings in the region. In February 1256 Henry ordered that Angus MacDonald of Islay, who had sought protection from neither Henry nor Hakon, should not be received in the lordship of Ireland. The Scottish king's officials assisted in the action against him by providing the English with the names of Angus's adherents. Henry's main concern was the security of Ireland and his lands in eastern Ulster in particular. Angus 's family had previously supported Gaelic Irish leaders in Ulster and Henry feared that he would support the leading Gaelic lord in the province, Brian O'Neill. O'Neill had successfully resisted efforts to force his submission and had 'devastated the plain land of Ulster' in 1253. By extending influence with the Scots and Norwegians, with the Manx king and some Hebrideans, Henry III sought to keep the peace in a way which would bolster his position in northern Ireland.22 52 England and Europe in the Reign of Henry Ill Influence and indirect involvement also characterised Henry's participation in the politics of the Scottish realm. In the early 1250s the realm's political elites looked to the English king as a source of guidance, leadership and support. For these magnates, Henry possessed the means to remove their rivals from office whilst claiming to respect their king's rights. In early 1252 one group of lords, led by the earls of Menteith and Mar persuaded Henry to act against Alan Durward and his allies. Menteith's family, the Comyns, and their allies secured control of the king's council and offices with Henry's backing during the festivities surrounding Alexander III's wedding at York. Three years later, it was Durward who sought the English king's intervention and encouraged Henry's dissatisfaction with Alexander's councillors. However, Scottish magnates seized the king, with only limited direct support from Henry, and carried Alexander to Roxburgh. Henry's role was to provide physical backing from this distance and to legitimise the transfer of power. He confirmed letters issued by Alexander which appointed a formal council of fifteen to govern Scotland until 1262. These letters also excluded a group of prelates and lords, including the Comyns and Mar, from office and access to the king. Henry's consent would be required to end the authority of this council or restore those excluded from power. Though he promised that these letters would be returned at the end ofthe minority and that no prejudice would be done to the king of Scots by his role, Henry had secured formal rights to determine the personnel and, by implication, the practice of Scottish government.23 Such powers were not the long-cherished aim of the English king. Unlike other elements of his relations with Scotland and its king in the 1250s, they did not develop from Henry's goals before 1249. His interventions in Scottish political society stemmed from appeals made to him by Scots. The value of this role to Henry was as the means to a number of ends. He must have hoped that a grateful minority regime would not cause him the difficulties which Alexander II had, would show him respect and add to his prestige and would provide him with active support. Henry also had reason to be anxious about the consequences of nonintervention. Open conflict between Scottish magnates was a threat not an opportunity. It would, and did, impinge on Henry's lands and interests. Henry's approach to Scottish politics remained fluid. The English king displayed no set attitude to Scottish magnates. The men favoured by Henry in 1251 were those blamed by him for the disturbances in 1244. One of them, Alan, son of the earl, was pardoned by Henry at York for his attack on Ireland. The English king sought to use lords with lands in both realms to influence Scottish government. Henry possessed stronger formal and informal bonds with cross-border magnates like John Balliol and Robert Ros and hoped this would make them direct the council in his interest. Their failure incurred Henry's serious hostility but shows the fragility of the king's influence. The truth was that Henry's actions at York were no guarantee of the support or goodwill of great Scottish magnates like Walter Comyn, earl of Menteith or William, earl of Mar. The greater formal rights which Henry secured in 1255 reflected his awareness of this. He wanted the ability to manage the young king's government without personal intervention or the open intrusion of English servants. His promise to protect Ewen MacDougall of Lorn in 1255 indicated Henry's belief that, as Alexander III's 'principal adviser', he could direct the actions of the latter's council. It showed a confidence in his ability to exert Royal Lordship in the British Isles, 1249-1272 53 unprecedented influence over what was a separate political society with minimal effort, which would prove to be misplaced.24 Henry's limited involvement in Scotland was a product of his overall outlook. The maintenance of his influence in the kingdom was never much more than a marginal concern. The English king was concerned with Scottish affairs only where they concerned his personal prestige. Only at Christmas 1251 and in September 1255 did Scotland merit Henry's personal involvement. Even on these occasions Henry swiftly became involved in other issues. Alexander's marriage at York was overshadowed by a public clash between the king and Simon de Montfort, while Henry hastened away from Scotland in 1255 to attend his son's investiture as king of Sicily. As a monarch with European ambitions, Henry's need was for a swift but secure resolution of Scottish political disputes.25 The king of England probably returned from Scotland in late September 1255, believing he had achieved this goal. It formed another element in the extension of his influence in the northern and western British Isles which had gained pace since the late 1240s. Henry had imposed the Treaty of Woodstock on the rulers of Gwynedd, Owain and Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, placing unprecedented territorial and political limits on their lordship in north Wales. The king also granted extensive lands to his friends and family in the Welsh Marches and in western Ireland. He marked a further change by giving Ireland and lands in Wales to his heir, Edward, in 1254. These acts were not a masterplan for the consolidation of Plantagenet lordship in the north and west, but Henry was aware of the interconnection of these areas. In early 1256 the king sent out warnings about Manx rebels to the Scottish king and nobility, to English officials in Wales and Ireland and, probably, to princes of Gwynedd. Henry's government was seeking to police a fragmented but strategically vital maritime region which lay between the realms of the British Isles. 26 However, as striking as the advance of Henry's lordship was the way in which his gains unravelled. His extension of royal lordship provoked a backlash. Though this became caught up in the English political crisis of 1258, the reactions of native polities was not dependent on events in England. This was most obvious in Wales. Llywelyn ap Gruffydd had seized sole power in Gwynedd in 1255 and late the next year he swept into Edward's lands in north-east Wales, extending his campaign into Powys and Deheubarth in 1257. Llywelyn claimed to be liberating the Welsh from 'bondage' and scored a string of military successes against English forces. 27 During 1256 and 1257, there were also hesitant but clear signs of growing resistance to Henry's settlement of Scotland. This settlement had excluded a group of magnates from power. These lords had strong reasons for opposing it and refused to seal the document which excluded them. They were not a negligible group. The earls of Menteith, Buchan and Mar were the leaders of the faction to which Alexander II had been forced to bow in 1242. With William, earl of Ross as their ally, they had a secure position in the north. When the new council threatened further action against them, the earls responded defiantly. In the summer of 1256 Henry was preparing to send English troops to the aid of the council but by February 1257 he was responding instead to negotiations between the Scottish parties. These parties looked to Henry to help resolve their disputes. In late July he sent an embassy to hold a council with the Scots 'to terminate and settle disputes stirred up' between them. Embarrassingly, 54 England and Europe in the Reign of Henry III however, when the council met at Stirling in August it was used by a group of prelates with Comyn associations to pronounce papal sentences of excommunication against the king's councillors. These sentences were in response to the council's seizure of the temporalities of St Andrews which followed the consecration of a kinsman of the Comyns, master Gamelin, as bishop in late 1255. For the pope's protege, Henry III, this was an added problem. For the Comyns and their allies, it justified an alteration in political tactics. These magnates now claimed to be acting as the defenders of the liberties of the Scottish Church. They allied this to an attack on Henry's settlement which was declared an 'abominable document . . . which might result in the dishonour of the king and kingdom' by the sympathetic Melrose chronicler. Posing as defenders of the royal and ecclesiastical liberties of Scotland, Menteith, Buchan, Mar and their allies claimed the leadership of the realm, perhaps the origin of Matthew Paris's garbled account of them as 'natives', expelling the foreign adherents of king and queen.28 While native blood was no stronger in this group than amongst their enemies, the northern earls lacked close ties with Henry and major English lands.29 As a result they found it easier to abandon the basis of minority politics and openly reject Henry's will. In late October 1257 Menteith, Mar and Buchan seized King Alexander at Kinross and carried him to Stirling. This was not a desperate act by a faction on the ropes. Since late 1255, the Comyns and their allies had successfully defended their interests in Scotland and at the curia, forcing their enemies to negotiate. The decision to seize Alexander was a display of confidence, presented in Scotland as a move to rescue the king from the hands of his discredited, excommunicated councillors and save the realm from interdict. The events of the winter and spring confirm the impression of their ascendancy, though not their unchallenged authority. The king's new keepers distributed offices and extended their influence, particularly in the south-west where John Comyn, Menteith's nephew, was made justiciar of Galloway. By comparison, their enemies waited for Henry's support and Alan Durward went to England before the end of December. In January, Henry ordered his northern barons to be ready to join an expedition to deliver the Scottish king from his 'rebels'. However the crisis was delayed until late March. Though the new Scottish regime sent envoys to Henry asking him to provide representatives to attend a 'parliament' in mid-April, this willingness to talk did not signal a readiness to capitulate to the English king.30 Henry certainly mistrusted them. He ordered his northern sheriffs to raise an army should his 'friends' be attacked and, if peace was kept, then they were to assemble their men at Roxburgh, the base for the coup which Henry had instigated in 1255. The English king was right to be suspicious. The 'adverse party' quickly followed diplomacy with force. In late March the king was at the head of an army which marched on Roxburgh against the 'traitors'. The army, which included a fearsome contingent from Galloway, was clearly raised and led by the Comyns. Their enemies initially offered to negotiate and then fled to England. Henry responded to the 'war and disturbance' by offering bases and troops to Durward and his allies, but their flight suggests that, unlike 1255, there was no wide coalition of magnates waiting for English leadership.3 1 The bellicose approach of the Comyn party from October 1257 did not occur in isolation. Just before the army took the field, on 18 March, the earls of Menteith, Mar, Buchan and Ross and a group of other lords put their names to an alliance Royal Lordship in the British Isles, 1249-1272 55 with Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, named as prince of Wales. The two parties promised mutual aid and agreed to make no peace with Henry or his supporters which did not include the other. Unlike Llywelyn, the Scots were only a party within their realm and were permitted to obey their king's 'strict order'. This was a reasonable precaution with an eye to future shifts of power and it is significant that the Scots did not seek to associate Alexander with the alliance. However, when the agreement was made, these men were still able to use the king against his 'traitors' and their long-term worries did not remove the immediate value of the alliance. Llywelyn and his new allies recognised that they were both objects of Henry III's hostility in early 1258. An agreement to resist the English king in tandem helped both. This sense of shared interest was not without precedents. Alexander II and Llywelyn ap Iorwerth had threatened to ally against Henry in the 1230s and the Scots and Welsh may well have been more closely aware of events in the other realm than is assumed. The seizure of Alexander III occurred after news that Henry had retreated ignominiously from Wales in September 1257 had reached Scotland. If the alliance of March 1258 is a unique survival it is not entirely surprising. In the next two months it proved useful to both parties and especially the Scots. The alliance ensured that Henry's military efforts would be divided between two expeditions. Of these it was the Welsh campaign which drew his personal attention and plans to support the king's 'friends' in the north stalled during April. By mid-May, Henry was seeking a negotiated settlement with the Comyns and their allies. In response to envoys from these lords, Henry asked only for the protection of his friends against new attacks, his daughter's well-being and for discussions between parties to be postponed until September. Until then the king was effectively calling a truce which left his enemies in power. Though he still talked about a campaign in Wales in his letter of 13 May to the Scots, within a week he was in discussions with Llywelyn, concluding a truce with the prince in June.32 The alliance had served both Llywelyn and the Scots lords well, but the ease with which they defied Henry was due to the collapse of the king's authority in England from early April. The formation of the baronial confederation on 7 April, Henry's promise to reform his realm in early May, and the barons' takeover of government at the Oxford parliament in early June corresponded with the gradual abandonment of planned campaigns in Wales and Scotland.33 During the next decade, Henry's political difficulties were a major factor in the distribution of power outside England. In 1258 the English king's wider interests suddenly passed out of his reach. In Scotland the influence he had held since 1255 was already faltering. It now evaporated. Between May and August there was no formal contact with the Scots. Events in the north were not clear but the only formal act of King Alexander, issued in October, was witnessed by Menteith, Mar and their ally, Hugh Barclay, indicating the Comyn party's continued dominance of the king.3 4 During the summer they had probably cemented this dominance by reaching agreement with magnates like Alexander Steward and the earl of Strathearn who had opposed them in 1255 but had not fled to Henry III in 1258. This recognition of the king's new officers and the widening of the regime's support may have been the news which reached England in late August and 'amazed' Henry. The Scots lords around the king were ready to demonstrate that further English involvement was unacceptable. In early September the Scottish king and his council met an English 56 England and Europe in the Reign of Henry Ill embassy at Melrose. They claimed that these envoys planned to repeat the coup of 1255 and seize Alexander. In response, they raised an army and led it to the border at Jedburgh to threaten the 'traitors'. The move was designed to quash any possible challenge to the council's authority and encourage Durward and his allies, who were still in England, to recognise that they would only recover their Scottish lands by reaching a settlement with their enemies. 35 This settlement followed swiftly. It resulted in a new royal council with powers to last until Alexander reached his majority. In November, Henry issued letters recognising this council but in very different circumstances to his similar action in 1255. Now Henry and the English government were outsiders. The Scots had established the council without English involvement and merely sought Henry's acceptance of their actions. The form of this recognition makes clear that this was still a minority government. Though Alexander was seventeen, the need for formal regulation of his councillors makes no sense in terms of political factions, dealings with England or the king's own interests unless he had stifl to claim his full rights as an adult. It is not necessary to see the young king as being behind the end of political conflict and if Alexander had forced all parties to a settlement his action would have surely been referred to in dealings with England which still showed Henry to be concerned with his daughter's treatment, a theme of earlier complaints. Instead the council emerged from agreement amongst the Scottish political elite. The new council of ten included Durward, the Steward and the queen-mother alongside Menteith, Buchan, Mar and Bishop Gamelin. However compromise was limited. The three justiciarships and the offices of chancellor and chamberlain remained in the hands of the Comyns and their allies. The death of Walter Comyn, earl of Menteith, in mid-November removed the most active and abrasive member of this group. It improved prospects of smoother relations on the council but did not weaken his friends seriously.36 The dominant group on the council remained men who had been excluded from power in 1255. Their seizure of power, armed demonstrations on the border and alliance with Llywelyn were all directed against the English king. The support they enjoyed owed something to their success in winning wider support for claims that Henry's actions had infringed the liberties of the kingdom. Henry had sparked similarly hostile reactions in England, Wales and Ireland by the late 1250s. His Scottish enemies were one more group in open opposition to Henry's ambitious policies. However, during the two years from late 1258 it was clear that this opposition did not mean a fundamental alteration in the relationship between the two realms. Such a shift would threaten the overlapping interests which existed between them. Instead of a dispute over the running of Scotland as a separate political society, debates between the two realms from 1259 concerned issues similar to those of the 1240s. The Scots lords asked for the payment of Queen Margaret's dowry, the surrender of the document which had excluded many of them from government, for Henry's consent to Alexander's coronation and for his promise not to aid the king of Man. In response the English government prevaricated. A similar approach to Llywelyn provoked the prince into war in 1260, but by contrast relations between English and Scottish realms improved.3 7 This improvement centred on the personal relations between the two kings who both began 1260 excluded from full power. During the summer, plans were laid for Royal Lordship in the British Isles, 1249-1272 57 a visit to the English court by Alexander and Margaret. This visit would prove to have major implications. Alexander probably insisted on it against the will of his councillors. It was these councillors who insisted on the series of conditions preventing the English from making demands on the king about the Scottish realm, changing his councillors or altering his status, perhaps declaring him to be of full age. Scots lords who had witnessed Henry's actions in 1251 and 1255 were reluctant to allow him a third chance to use his son-in-law. According to Matthew Paris, the Scots were also angered by the news that their queen was pregnant. In return for allowing Margaret to remain in England to give birth after he had returned north, Alexander received a promise from Henry that, should he die, his newborn heir would be handed to three or more lords from a list of thirteen bishops, earls and barons. It was the concerns of these magnates rather than Alexander which needed to be satisfied. This would prove to be the last occasion when the authority of a group of Scottish magnates was formally acknowledged by Alexander. Although the arrangement marked the Scots' preparation for a future minority, it was also the last act of the existing one. The chief importance of Alexander's visit to England was as the symbolic establishment of his authority. Henry used the occasion for a lavish display of his family connections designed to impress English and Scots alike. By contrast with Alexander's visits to England in 1251 and 1256, in 1260 the practical results of the meeting between the kings concerned the partial satisfaction of Alexander's demands and not an expression of Henry's informal superiority. Alexander returned to Scotland strengthened in money and prestige. He used this strength to exert his authority over his council. The king's intervention in a threecornered dispute over the earldom of Menteith was the first, indisputable evidence of the king enforcing his will over a powerful group of his magnates, including Buchan, Mar, Durward and two other earls. Interestingly, Henry too recovered authority in the aftermath of the Scottish king's visit. This was due to the collapse of the baronial council in late 1260, but the contrast between the failure of the council to deal with Llywelyn's fresh attacks and Henry's establishment of friendly relations with the Scots was obvious.38 Henry's anxiety to maintain this friendship was of major value to Alexander during the next six years. The latter's intervention in Menteith was accepted by most of his magnates, but the disappointed claimants looked for means to reverse his judgement. Walter Comyn's widow, Countess Isabella of Menteith, and her husband, the English knight, John Russell, sought Henry's aid. In September 1261 Henry confirmed documents stating Isabella's right to the earldom and allowed a papal nuncio to begin hearing the case in England after 1263. However, in contrast to his support of the Bissets, Henry gave no active support to the couple. Henry had no wish to precipitate a crisis with Scotland to add to his other troubles. His priorities are shown by his treatment of another rejected claimant. John Comyn was a much more powerful magnate than the countess. Instead of encouraging his Scottish grievances, Henry retained him as a source of valuable support in the English political crisis.39 These preoccupations also affected English activity in the sensitive maritime region around the north Irish Sea. English concerns with this area increased in the late 1250s. The crisis of 1258 in Britain coincided with an increasingly effective challenge to the dominance of English officials and magnates in the north of 58 England and Europe in the Reign of Henry Ill Ireland. In 1255 Brian O'Neill formed an alliance with Fedlimid and Aed O'Connor, the leading Gaelic lords in Connacht who were waging a largely successful war against the government and Walter de Burgh, lord of Connacht. In 1258 Aed O'Connor and other Irish lords recognised O'Neill as high-king. This alliance of Irish magnates coincided with the collapse of Henry's influence in the Isles and Scotland. The implications of this were demonstrated by the plundering attack of the Hebridean magnate, Dugald MacRuairi, on the English of Connacht. The marriage of Dugald's daughter to Aed O'Connor in 1259 represented an alliance with dangers for both English and Scottish governments. Most directly, the prospect of Irish lords being supported by heavily armed Hebrideans represented a direct threat to the colony in Connacht and Ulster.40 In these circumstances, the distant influence of Hakon of Norway was of limited value to the English government. The collapse of Henry III's Mediterranean plans reduced the wider value of the Norwegian alliance and in 1259, whilst protesting continued friendship, Henry informed Hakon that the proposed marriage alliance between their children would not occur. Instead the English recognised that concerns about the rapid political developments in the region were shared by the Scottish council. The Comyns, Alexander, earl of Buchan and John Comyn of Badenoch, Alexander Stewart and his brother Walter Bailloch, and the earls of Ross and Strathearn were all lords with interests and estates in the lands bordering the Isles and in a position to direct the council. They may well have resented the support of Henry III for lords in the Isles like Magnus of Man and Ewen of Lorn during the mid-1250s. By 1259 these Scottish 'marchers' may already have been exerting pressure on the Isles. It may have been under this pressure that Ewen submitted, recovering his Scottish lordships for a high rent, designed to ensure his allegiance. In May 1259 the Scots wrote to Henry III asking him not to assist Magnus, king of Man. While their aims probably did not include Man itself at this point, Magnus also held Lewis and Skye and the earl of Ross was looking covetously at these islands. The approach by the Scots must have warned Henry that their ambitions in the Isles did not coincide with his own. However, in 1259-1260 the English could not afford to be choosy. The earldom of Ulster was the target of a major attack by Brian O'Neill and the O'Connors. In late April 1260 English officials in Ireland were ordered to prevent Scots coming to Ir~land and forming alliances to the harm of the Scottish king. This was almost certainly directed against the Islesmen, recognised as a common danger by both English and Scottish governments. The success of their efforts was possibly indicated by the absence of Hebrideans amongst the list of leaders killed with O'Neill in his defeat by the English of Ulster at Down in June 1260. The victory, recorded by an Irish bard as won by the heavily armoured foreigners over the silk-clad Gaels, would have been much harder if O'Neill had been aided by his own foreigners from the Isles.4I The English government may have encouraged Scottish ambitions in the Isles at a decisive point. Attacks initiated by Scottish magnates from 1261 were to receive the enthusiastic endorsement of their young king as he assumed power. For Alexander, war in the Isles provided a bridge with the last goals of his father and with the interests of a powerful group amongst his earls and lords. While warfare in the Hebrides was left to these magnates, Alexander copied his father by seeking to buy out Hakon's claims in the Isles in 1261 and in 1263 coordinated the defence of Royal Lordship in the British Isles, 1249-1272 59 his realm against the Norwegians in which the great lords of north and west, once again, took the chief active role. Significantly, when Alexander took the field in person it was in a different direction. In 1264 the king raised an army and fleet to sail to Man and force the submission of King Magnus to him. Alexander III's plans for Man had not been foreshadowed by previous royal ambitions on the island and Magnus's surrender at Dumfries had a greater significance in the British Isles than the submission of the Hebrideans in the same year. 4 2 Alexander's campaign had exploited the political weakness of England in 1264. The war between the Scottish and Norwegian kings was watched with impotent anxiety by Henry Ill. His efforts between 1262 and 1264 to negotiate between the parties were politely ignored. Compared with 1255 when Henry had possessed considerable influence with both kings, this failure graphically illustrated the decline of his reach in the northern British Isles. This decline was clearest with regard to Man. Alexander had imposed his lordship on an island which had been under Henry's protection since the 1230s. In other areas too the war in the Isles touched Henry's interests. The king and his son could only respond indirectly. Edward's creation of Walter de Burgh as earl of Ulster at the height of the war in July 1263 may have been, in part, an effort to build support in English politics. However, its timing and regional significance owed more to the need for a secure focus for lordship in the north of the colony, against the Irish, but also at a time of major instability in the neighbouring Isles, against possible attacks of Scots, Norwegians or fugitive Hebrideans. The creation was an admission that the English crown could not defend its regional interests. 43 This was underlined in 1265 when Magnus of Man died. Alexander took the island under his direct rule, an action which seems to show the Scottish king's lordship moving in the opposite direction to that of Henry in the region. Care is needed in drawing such a conclusion. The treaty of Perth in 1266 transferred the rights of the Norwegian crown in the Hebrides and Man to the kings of Scots in return for annual payments, and subjected the Islesmen to Scottish laws and customs. However, although the Manx dynasty was extinguished, Alexander largely accepted the rule of the other Hebridean dynasties. His dealings with these dynasties worked principally through western magnates like the Comyns, the Stewarts and the earls of Ross and Strathearn. The success of royal authority rested on the stability of aristocratic alliances and power structures in the region and was not much removed from English lordship in much of Connacht and Ulster. Just as English rule in north-west Ireland was vulnerable to shifts of political power and the failure of Marcher dynasties, so would Scottish authority in the Isles prove to be fragile after 1286. Direct rule was equally problematic. The Manxmen rebelled against Alexander in 1269 and 1275 and after 1286 would express a hostile view of Scottish rule. Alexander III's advances in the west proved no more secure than had Henry III's during the 1240s and 1250s. 44 Scottish activities in the Isles during the 1260s exploited English political crises without causing a direct clash. While Llywelyn ap Gruffudd renewed war against the English from late 1262, Alexander III's aims could be achieved whilst maintaining friendship with Henry. Unlike Llywelyn and his own father he did not have territorial ambitions which could only be won through military intervention in alliance with the enemies of the English crown. However, grievances did remain, over Queen 60 England and Europe in the Reign of Henry Ill Margaret's dowry and Henry's failure to return the 1255 document, which might have induced a king of Alexander II's temperament to exert diplomatic or military pressure on the rival parties. Alexander III made no such move. Throughout the period of sporadic civil war in England between 1263 and 1267, Alexander was identified by all parties as a natural ally of King Henry. It was only the capture of Henry and Edward by Simon de Montfort at Lewes in May 1264 that forced a direct role on Alexander. During the autumn and winter, he sent envoys to the English government seeking access to the captives reportedly arousing de Montfort's suspicions. By the spring of 1265, de Montfort was seeking to win over Alexander. In early March two letters were sent to him in Henry's name. The first commanded him to recognise the peace in England as Henry's vassal. The second was a personal appeal based on 'ties of blood and affinity', which it was hoped the queen would support in the interests of her family. These approaches may have had some success. By late May the king of Scots's envoys were en route to Henry and de Montfort at Worcester. They included Guy Balliol of Cavers, who was to die as de Montfort's standard-bearer at Evesham in August. His presence may indicate that Alexander was using his contacts with de Montfort and was ready to recognise the new regime. If so, his readiness ceased when Edward escaped from captivity and renewed the war in late May. According to a Scottish chronicle, Alexander had raised an army to aid Edward when the news arrived of de Montfort's defeat and death at Evesham on 4 August 1265. 45 The Scottish king was also involved in the final sparks of opposition to Henry and Edward. In January 1267 Edward came north to besiege the rebel, John de Vesci, in Alnwick Castle. De Vesci was Alexander's cousin and vassal, and Scottish landowners fought in both camps. Although lord of Tynedale, Alexander was not involved himself, but he did show his continued support for Edward when the latter visited him at either Roxburgh or Haddington after the capture of Alnwick. One of Edward's supporters, Gilbert de Umfraville, was enfeoffed with the earldom of Angus and Edward was allowed to raise a force of Scots and lead them against a new uprising in the Midlands. Though this force was probably composed of the cross-border lords who swore an oath to Edward at York, they went with the open consent of the Scottish king.46 The events of 1267 marked the last phase of the English political crisis. They also cemented the close family ties between Alexander and his English kin. This family mood prevailed the following year when Edward and his brother, Edmund, visited the Scottish king and queen and the royal couple travelled south with them to meet Henry at York 'for the sake of solace and recreation'. The meeting was clearly friendly and informal, but during it, a series of transactions involving Anglo-Scottish magnates were carried through. The family reunion was not divorced from the business of the two kings or their vassals. Alexander's friendship for his English kin did not remove areas of dispute. On the lingering issues of ecclesiastical taxation and on Queen Margaret's dowry, and in a fresh dispute about Alexander's rights in the lordship of Penrith, the Scottish king was no more ready to concede than his father would have been. However, larger issues seem to have been allowed to drop. Henry does not seem to have pressed obligations on Alexander like those he sought in 1244 or the 1250s. In tum, after he gained full authority in 1260-1261, Alexander did not renew the quest for his coronation. 47 Royal Lordship in the British Isles, 1249-1272 61 Peace and stability had been established during the 1260s against a background of family ties, personal visits and expressions of affection. This apparently genuine affection, stretching back to 1251, was perhaps the most important achievement of Henry III during Alexander's minority. However, the good relations between kings and kingdoms after 1260 were also due to English weakness. Despite long-term factors encouraging cooperation, amity was not automatic. In the 1230s and 1240s, a range of issues had caused tensions and, despite his reputation for goodwill, Henry did seek to demonstrate a material and symbolic superiority over the Scottish kings. The Scots' responses to these expressions of limited lordship were not uniformly hostile. Even Alexander II had recognised his obligations to Henry in 1244. while the settlement of 1255, giving the English king control over the duration of Alexander III's minority and composition of his council was accepted by a large group of Scots lords. For this group, Henry's promise that his role was temporary was sufficient protection in return for his political support and it was their favourable attitude to Henry which Fordun recorded. However, those excluded from the council claimed that Henry's intervention threatened Scottish liberties. The resistance of an aristocratic group, motivated by both private interests and more general hostility to external interference, was a combination which would re-emerge in opposition to efforts to establish direct English royal lordship in Scotland from the 1290s. Though the struggles of the 1250s never reached the scale of the wars after 1296, 1258 was a crucial year for Scotland. The prospect of an English army waging war with Scottish allies against the group of lords with custody of Alexander was very real. Though, as the summer showed, a political settlement was always possible, major conflict seemed likely in March and may have occurred but for the crisis in England. The interest and involvement of Scotland in the unfolding of this crisis from April 1258 emphasises the impossibility of separating the northern kingdom from the other political societies of the British Isles. This involvement went beyond the aid given by Alexander and some of his magnates to Henry. From a wider perspective, the terms of the Treaty of Perth in 1266 were a consequence of the English crisis like the Treaty of Montgomery the following year, by which Henry recognised Llywelyn as Prince ofWales and direct lord of the native Welsh princes. 48 Both treaties represented the contraction of Henry's lordship on the fringes of his varied and complex dominions in the British Isles. The Treaty of Montgomery was a much more direct loss of influence and, as Llywelyn remained Henry's vassal, concerned the internal character of royal lordship in Wales. However, the Treaty of Perth, and in particular the extension of Alexander's direct lordship over Man concerned the English king. At the earliest opportunity, in the late 1280s, Edward I would secure the island. His chosen agent, Richard, earl of Ulster, was the son of the magnate whose authority in north-east Ulster had been established during the crisis of the early 1260s in the region. It is possible that Edward regarded the Scottish lordship of Man and Llywelyn's principality as both being unpalatable results of the temporary collapse of his family's power in the 1260s. The treaties also emphasised differences in the positions of Alexander and Llywelyn which were central to Scotland's place in the British Isles. Unlike Llywelyn, Alexander was the heir to an established royal lordship with defined status and territory. During the early 1260s, the Scottish king had not needed to wage war against Henry or seek alliances with his enemies, and his gains from the England and Europe in the Reign of Henry lil 62 crisis represented a much more limited shift in power. The relative position of the Scottish king and the Welsh prince by 1270 was shown by Henry III's promise to pay 2000 marks of Margaret's long-overdue dowry from the money owed by Llywelyn for his treaty. While Alexander emerged from the 1260s as the secure ruler of his realm and Henry's friend and kinsman, Llywelyn's more spectacular achievements had left a legacy of debt and mistrust which would cause fresh conflict within a decade.49 It is important not to see the relations between English and Scottish monarchies in isolation. They were part of the interplay between numerous communities and lords in the British Isles. The ability of the kings to direct events away from their heartlands varied greatly during these years and affected their dealings with each other. Neither were these dealings set in stable and fixed patterns between 1217 and 1290. Even a king with limited ambitions, like Henry III, could still be seen as a threat by some Scots and the dependence on personal factors was illustrated by the events which followed Alexander's death in 1286. While Edward I's approach to a new Scottish minority between 1286 and 1290 had similarities to the actions of his father in the 1250s, his demands for sovereign lordship over Scotland from 1291 went far beyond any earlier search for limited short-term influence. The reaction from Scottish elites to Edward's demands showed that, while the stability of Scottish kingship might depend on personal factors, the survival of the rights of crown and realm rested on a wider base of support. Notes 2 3 4 5 6 Johannes de Fordun, Chronica Gentis Scotorum, ed. W.F. Skene (Edinburgh, 18711872), i, 295-6. Recent works have begun to examine the place of the thirteenth century Scottish realm in the British Isles. See in particular K. Stringer, 'Scottish foundations: Thirteenthcentury perspectives' in eds A. Grant and K.J. Stringer, Uniting the Kingdom? The Making of British History (London and New York, 1995), 85-96. For the extent and importance of cross-border landholding see K.J. Stringer, Earl David of Huntingdon (Edinburgh, 1985), 177-211; ibid., 'Identities in thirteenth-century England: frontier society in the far north', in eds C. Bjorn, A. Grant and K.J. Stringer, Social and Political Identities in Western History (Copenhagen, 1994), 28-66; ibid., 'Periphery and core in thirteenth century Scotland: Alan son of Roland, lord of Galloway and constable of Scotland', in eds A. Grant and K.J. Stringer, Medieval Scotland, Crown, Lordship and Community (Edinburgh, 1993), 82-113. CDS, i, nos 761, 799, 808, 852, 856, 862, 890, 909, 1086; ed. A.O. Anderson, Scottish Annals from English Chroniclers (London, 1908), 335; Stringer, 'Periphery and core', 93-4; D.A. Carpenter, The Minority of Henry Ill (Berkeley, 1990), 245, 260, 343-58; R. Frame, Ireland and Britain, 1170-1450 (London, 1998), 158-60. As Alexander's heir-presumptive, his cousin, John the Scot, was Chester's ward and was married by the earl to a daughter of Llywelyn, Alexander may have had direct concerns about the dispute (A.O. Anderson, Early Sources of Scottish History, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1922), ii, 452, 462). CDS, i, nos 1113, 1181; CPL, i, 83; N. Vincent, Peter des Roches, an alien in English politics, 1205-1238 (Cambridge, 1996), 268-80, 301-2. CDS, i, nos 1181, 1335; Anderson, English Chroniclers, 343-5; Anderson, Early Royal Lordship in the British Isles, 1249-1272 63 Sources, ii, 498-9; Vincent, Peter des Roches, 371, 417-18, 438-40. Between 1234 and 1237 Alexander was repeatedly pressed by the pope to obey his lord, Henry III (CPL, i, 142; ed. E.L.G. Stones, Anglo-Scottish Relations 1174-1328 (Oxford, 1965), 34-7; CDS, i, no. 1277). 7 Walter Bower, Scotichronicon, ed. D.E.R. Watt, 9 vols (Edinburgh, 1987-98), v, 17987; Anderson, English Chroniclers, 349-50; Anderson, Early Sources, ii, 536-9; A. Young, Robert the Bruce's Rivals: The Comyns, 1212-1314 (East Linton, 1997), 41-3; A. Young, 'The north and Anglo-Scottish relations in the thirteenth century', in eds J.C. Appleby and P. Dalton, Government, Religion and Society in Northern England 1000-1700 (Stroud, 1997), 77-89, 84-5. 8 Anderson, English Chroniclers, 350-1; Anderson, Early Sources, 536-9; CDS. i, nos. 1621, 1624, 1631. 9 Anderson, English Chroniclers, 351-8; CDS, i, nos. 1631, 1634, 1637, 1642, 1643, 1647-50, 1654; Foedera, i, 257; Scotichronicon, v, 184-5. Although Alexander reportedly received aid from his French in-laws, Henry had concluded a truce with Louis IX in 1243 and was not fighting on two fronts. 10 Anderson, Early Sources, 538. Dafydd ap Llywelyn, son of Llywelyn ap Iorwerth of Gwynedd renounced the peace with Henry in July 1244 and the English king led a major campaign in Wales the following summer. At least one Scottish source ascribed Henry's retreat to this cause (Johannes de Fordun, i, 291-2; BT, RBH, 238-9; F.M. Powicke, Henry Ill and the Lord Edward (Oxford, 1947), 632-4; J.B. Smith, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, Prince ofWales (Cardiff, 1998), 48-9). 11 For Galloway see A.A.M. Duncan, Scotland: The Making of the Kingdom (Edinburgh, 1975), 531-2; R. Frame, 'Henry III and Ireland: The shaping of a peripheral lordship' in Frame, Ireland and Britain, 31-58, especially 46-7; ibid., 'Ireland and the Barons Wars' in Frame, Ireland and Britain, 62; T. McNeill, Anglo-Norman Ulster (Edinburgh, 1980), 29; J.B. Smith, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, 62-8; H.W. Ridgeway, 'Foreign favourites and Henry III's problems of patronage, 1247-58', EHR 104 (1989), 590-610. 12 CDS, i, nos. 1640-1, 1865, 2671-2; CD!, i, nos 2732, 2752, 2754, 2755, 2925; Anderson, English Chroniclers, 355; Scotichronicon, v, 186-7. Alexander II reputedly disowned Alan to Henry III but he was pardoned by the latter when the Comyns and other Scottish enemies of the Bissets were established in power in 1251-1252. 13 Anderson, Early Sources, ii, 542, 546, 548-50, 553-9; CD!, i, nos 2269, 2327, 2381; K. Helle, 'Anglo-Scandinavian Relations in the reign of Hakon Hakonsson ( 12171263)' in Medieval Scandinavia 1 (1968), 101-14; A.O. Johnsen, 'The payments from the Hebrides and the Isle of Man to the crown of Norway', Scottish Historical Review 58 (1969), 18-34; A.A.M. Duncan and A.L. Brown, 'Argyll and the Western Isles in the Early Middle Ages', Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 90 (1956-7), 192-220, 207-10; R.A. McDonald, The Kingdom of the Isles: Scotland's Western Seaboard c.JJ00-1336 (East Linton, 1997), 98-102. 14 It was probably Alexander II who renewed the request for coronation which concerned Henry III in 1250-1251. He certainly encouraged the pope's canonisation of Queen Margaret which occurred in 1250 (CDS, i, no. 1798). 15 CDS, i, nos. 1812, 1816, 1818, 1847-8, 1852, 1857, 1865; Foedera, i, 179; Anderson, English Chroniclers, 363-8; Johannes de Fordun, i, 295-6; D.E.R. Watt, 'The Minority of Alexander III of Scotland', TRHS, 5th series, 21 (1971), 1-23, 9-10; K. Staniland, 'The nuptials of Alexander III of Scotland and Margaret Plantagenet', Nottingham Medieval Studies 30 (1986), 20-45. The value of such ill-defined displays of English royal prestige has recently been discussed with regard to Alexander III's attendance on Edward I in 1278 (R.R. Davies, The First English Empire: Power and Identities in the British Isles 1093-1343 (Oxford, 2000), 22-5. 64 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 England and Europe in the Reign of Henry III Anderson, Early Sources, ii, 580-5; Anderson, English Chroniclers, 370-3; Stones, Anglo-Scottish Relations, no. 10; CDS, i, nos. 1986-7, 1995, 2002-3, 2013, 2015, 2053; Foedera, i, 327; CR. 1254-56, 218; Duncan, Scotland, 565-7; Watt, 'Minority', 14-15. Foedera, i, 277, CR, I253-54, 70, 108; CDS, i, nos. 1984-85; J.R. Maddicott, Simon de Montfort (Cambridge, 1994), 106-24; Powicke, Henry Ill, 230-6; S. Lloyd, 'Henry III, the Crusade and the Mediterranean', eds, M. Jones and M. Vale, England and her Neighbours Essays in Honour of Pierre Chaplais (London, 1989), 97-119. From Bordeaux, Henry III sent his Gascon lieutenant and brother-in-law, Simon de Montfort, to Scotland in August 1254 with secret information about the king's anxiety. This may have been a further request for support or financial aid (Foedera. i, 306). B. Weiler, 'England and the Empire, 1216-1272: Anglo-German Relations during the reign of Henry III', unpublished PhD thesis, University of St Andrews (1999), 128-38; Maddicot, Simon de Montfort, 128-9; Foedera, i, 322, 336, 348-9; CDS, i, nos. 2040, 2065. B. Gelsinger, 'A thirteenth-century Castillian-Norwegiarr alliance', Medievalia et Humanistica, New Series 10 (1981), 55-80; CR, 1256-59, 276-7; Weiler, 'England and the Empire', 118. Anderson, Early Sources, ii, 567-9, 573, 576-8, 587; CD!, i, no. 3206; S. Duffy, 'The Bruce brothers and the Irish Sea world, 1306-29', Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies 21 (1991), 55-86, 63. The Chronicle of Man describes the defeat of Magnus and Ewen by the Manxmen in 1250, but says that in 1252 Magnus was 'received ... with joy' on Man. This does not suggest a successful conquest of the island but an arrangement which Magnus was quick to have confirmed by Henry and Hakon. CDS, i, nos. 2014, 2046; Foedera, i, 338; Chronicon de Lanercost, Bannatyne Club (Edinburgh, 1839), 60-1. Foedera, i, 336; Annala Connacht, The Annals ofConnacht, ed. A.M. Freeman (Dublin, 1996), 102-3, 108-9; J. Lydon, 'A land of war', ed. A. Cosgrove, A New History of Ireland, II, Medieval Ireland (Oxford, 1987), 240-74, 244. Johannes de Fordun, i, 295-7; Anderson, Early Sources, ii, 571, 580-4; Anderson, English Chroniclers, 372-4; Stones, Anglo-Scottish Relations, no. 10. CDS, i, nos. 1865, 2014; Anderson, English Chroniclers, 370, 372-4. John Balliol was only forgiven for his treatment of Queen Margaret and restored to Henry's favour in 1257 (CDS, i, no 2091). Maddicott, Simon de Montfort, 114; Weiler, 'England and the Empire', 134. CDS, i, no. 2046; Smith, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, 58-60, 64n; Frame, 'Henry III and Ireland', 49-54; Ridgeway, 'Foreign favourites'; M. Prestwich, Edward I (London, 1988), 10-15; C.W. Lewis, 'The Treaty of Woodstock: Its background and significance', Welsh History Review 2 (1964-5), 37-65. BT, RBH, 247-51; Smith, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, 84-101. For contemporary Gascon resistance to Henry's government see J.B. Smith, 'Adversaries of Edward 1: Gaston de Bearn and Llywelyn ap Gruffudd', eds C. Richmond and I. Harvey, Recognitions: Essays in Honour of Edmund Fryde (Aberystwyth, 1996), 55-88. Littere Wallie, ed. J.G. Edwards (Cardiff, 1940), no. 317; CDS, i, no. 2058; Foedera, i, 353, 362; Anderson, Early Sources, ii, 585-6, 588-9; Anderson, English Chroniclers, 376; Johannes de Fordun, i, 297-8. Gamelin was consecrated bishop of St Andrews against the will of the council in December 1255. He was then driven into exile and took his complaints to Pope Alexander who, in tum wrote to Henry III asking for redress (CDS, i, no. 2037; M. Ash, 'The Church in the Reign of Alexander III', ed. N. Reid, Scotland in the Reign of Alexander Ill (Edinburgh, 1990), 31-52, 38-9). It is, however, striking that John Balliol and Robert Ros, the two magnates with major Royal Lordship in the British Isles, 1249-1272 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 65 lands in both realms who had incurred Hemy's hostility in 1255 did not join their former allies in challenging the English king and the Scottish council in 1256-57. Balliol was formally forgiven by Henry in August 1257 (CDS, i, no. 2092). Johannes de Fordun, i, 297-8; Scotichronicon, v, 318-21; Anderson, Early Sources, ii, 589-90; Littere Wallie, no. 317; CR, 1256-59, 290--1, 300--1. The dispatch of the Scottish embassy in March 1258 was not a result of a loss of power by Alexander's captors. One of the envoys was the abbot of Jedburgh who had pronounced excommunication against Durward and his allies in 1257 and the 'parliament' they asked Henry to send representatives to was to meet at Stirling, the burgh to which the Comyn party had taken Alexander in 1257. For alternative views of 1257-59 in Scotland see Watt, 'Minority', 17-19; Duncan, Scotland, 571-6; Young, The Comyns, 57-61. CR, 1256-59, 299-301, 302; CDS, i, nos. 2116-8; Anderson, Early Sources, ii, 591. Scottish chroniclers recorded Henry's retreat from Wales in 1257 as a defeat (Anderson, Early Sources, ii, 588). Littere Wallie, nos. 33, 37, 317; Foedera, i, 370, 371; CR, 1256-59, 294-5, 299, 31011; Smith, Uywelyn ap Gruffudd, 104-16. For this timetable and events in England see D.A. Carpenter, 'What happened in 1258?', eds J. Gillingham and J.C. Holt, War and Government in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of J.O. Prestwich (Woodbridge, 1984), 106-19. Liber Ecclesie de Scon, Bannatyne Club (Edinburgh, 1843), no. 108. The evidence from' May 1258 does not prove that Alexander was in control of his government. The envoys sent to England were Adam Malcarston, the provost of St Marys on the Rock at St Andrews, and Thomas Normanville, justiciar of Lothian before 1255 and amongst the group excluded from power by Henry, men whose sympathies were strongly with the Comyn party. For Malcarston see D.E.R. Watt, A Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Graduates to 1410 (Oxford, 1977), 371-3. Henry's attempts to ensure his daughter's good treatment also make more sense if she was still under the control of the group which had been accused of mistreating her in 1255. CR, 1256-59, 329; Anderson, Early Sources, ii, 592-3. The earl of Stratheam was at St Andrews in April, giving a vague response to a request from Henry III that the earl should protect Queen Margaret. The earl may have been more concerned with making peace with the queen's custodians (Foedera, i, 376). Stones, Anglo-Scottish Relations, no. 11; Foedera, i, 378; Anderson, Early Sources, ii, 593; Anderson, English Chroniclers, 376. For the continued dominance of the offices of Scottish government by the group which seized power in 1257 see Duncan, Scotland, 573-4; Young, The Comyns, 68-70. CR, 1256-59, 477; Smith, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, 120--31. CDS, i, nos. 2198, 2204, 2205; Foedera, i, 402; Anderson, English Chroniclers, 378-9; Vetera Monumenta Hibemorum et Scotorum Historiam lllustrantia, ed. A. Theiner (Rome, 1864), no. 237; Scotichronicon, v, 322-3. After reasserting his authority, Hemy also sought to improve relations with Llywelyn, though no final agreement was reached. Llywelyn's envoy to Henry was a Scot, Alan Irvine, who had negotiated the 1258 alliance. His employment may point to continuing contacts between the prince and the chief councillors of the Scottish king (Smith, Uywelyn ap Gruffudd, 134-5). W. Fraser (ed.), The Red Book of Menteith, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1880), ii, nos. 7, 8; Scotichronicon, v, 322-3; CDS, i, nos. 2284, 2285, 2287, 2291. Ann. Connacht, 112-13, 126-9; Duffy, 'The Bruce Brothers', 69; Frame, 'Henry III and Ireland', 51-2. CR, 1256-59, 476-7; The Acts of Parliament of Scotland, 12 vols (Edinburgh, 181475), i, 115 (henceforth cited as APS); CD/, ii, no. 661; Ann. Connacht, 130--3; Lydon, 'Land of War', 244-5. Henry's response to the Scottish request concerning the king of 66 England and Europe in the Reign of Henry Ill Man and his letter to Hakon were written on consecutive days in May 1259 suggesting a conscious shift in English policy. Though the document by which Ewen held his lands has been dated to 1255-56, the presence of Mar amongst his guarantors would have been unlikely shortly after the earl had been excluded from government by Henry III. The earl of Ross attacked Skye in 1262 and was lord of the island after 1266. 42 Anderson, Early Sources, ii, 602-42, 648-9; Scotichronicon, v, 346-7; McDonald, Kingdom of the Isles, 106-23; E.J. Cowan, 'Norwegian Sunset - Scottish Dawn: Hakon IV and Alexander III' in Reid, Alexander Ill, 103-31. 43 Foedera, i, 417; CR, 1261-64, 388; CDS, i, no. 2320. For the timing and possible motivation for Edward's grant to de Burgh see R. Frame, 'Ireland and the Barons' Wars', Frame, Britain and Ireland, 59-10,65-6. 44 Anderson, Early Sources, ii, 653, 672-3; Scotichronicon, v, 369; APS, i, 420; R. Lustig, 'The Treaty of Perth: a re-examination', Scottish Historical Review 58 (1979), 35-57; Foedera, i, 739. 45 CDS, i, nos. 2377-9, 2381; Anderson, Early Sources, ii, 649-52; Scotichronicon, v, 352-3. Alexander presumably gave his support to Robert Bruce, John Balliol and John Comyn who raised men from their Scottish estates to support Henry in 1264. 46 Lanercost Chron., 81; Scotichronicon, v, 354-5; CDS, i, nos. 2429, 2432, 2452; K.J. Stringer, 'Nobility and Identity in medieval Britain and Ireland: The De Vesey Family, c.ll24-l314', ed. B. Smith, Britain and Ireland 900-1300: Insular Responses to Medieval European Change (Cambridge, 1999), 199-239; Prestwich, Edward I, 57-8. 47 Scotichronicon, v, 370-1; CDS, i, nos. 2482-3, 2486, 2489-96, 2578-80; Foedera, i, 477; M. Ash, 'The Church', 44; P.C. Ferguson, Medieval Papal Representatives in Scotland: Legates, Nuncios and Judges-Delegate, 1125-1286 (Edinburgh, 1997), 10811. Other contacts between the royal families occurred at Christmas 1267 when Edmund, Henry's younger son, visited Margaret and Alexander at Berwick, while the Scottish king and queen came south to visit Henry at Christmas 1270 (CDS, i, no. 2542; Scotichronicon, v, 367). 48 For the Treaty of Montgomery and its background see Littere Wallie, no. 1; Smith, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, 139-86; R.R. Davies, The Age of Conquest: Wales 1063-1415 (Oxford, 1991), 312-16; A.D. Carr, Llywelyn ap Gruffydd (Cardiff, 1982). 49 CDS, i, no. 2580. Though, like Llywelyn, Alexander III had secured his new lands by promising an annual payment to the Norwegian king.
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