Add to that the fact that the great majority of the Scots noble families were bound by double bonds of fealty to Edward, tied to him as much by the simple truth that they all held spacious lands and rich estates in England by his grace and favour as by the ancient laws of Norman-French feudality. And of course these same Scots nobles benefited greatly from having Edward’s well-equipped fighting men conveniently at hand to assist them with policing their own lands, since they did not then have to hire and equip costly men-at-arms of their own.
And so it becomes clear what was in truth afoot in the Scottish lands north of the border: Scots magnates, in return for the privilege of using English soldiers at no cost other than food and drink, were being induced to turn a blind eye to “irregularities” in the activities of certain of those visiting troops, even at the cost of hardship to their own Scots people. Not all the Scots noble houses were involved, and some may not have been comfortable with what was taking place, but they must all have known of it. And the alternative—the loss of well-trained auxiliary troops and a very real loss of privilege and royal favour for refusing to cooperate and be compliant—intimidated many of them and overcame the consciences of others.
Thus, English infantry and mounted men-at-arms roamed at will throughout Scotland’s border country in that period of 1294 and 1295, free to behave as they wished, whether it was called reprisals, policing, or the collection of rents and taxes by the Scots landlords, and no Scots magnate, anywhere, spoke of abuse of power, or unprovoked aggression, or royal English displeasure and revenge.
The first patrols we sent out late that spring were a complete success: unanticipated, rapid, and thorough. Fully five hundred men were dispatched on the first sweep, most of them bowmen, although none of them were limited to the bow alone. They dispersed from Will’s main camp, moving west and south in groups of fifty, with five ten-man squads in each group. One hundred men bound for Galloway, the farthest end of the sweep to the west, twenty-five miles distant, went first in the grey light of pre-dawn, and they were followed at two-hour intervals by the remaining groups, the last of which headed directly south to the open Annandale lands. All were ordered to proceed at speed but keeping themselves out of sight, and to be in place by nightfall, ready to mount a coordinated attack at dawn the next day.
I celebrated Mass with them before dawn on the day they left and distributed Communion to them all, and I remember that I was not in the least upset that they were setting off to do what they would do, for by then I had seen for myself the ravages inflicted by the people they were setting out to stop, and my own righteous anger overrode my priestly training sufficiently to permit me to wish them well in their assault.
On that first morning of the sweep two groups were found, a score of miles apart from each other, in the act of committing atrocities against Scots people. In one location they had already killed a farmer and his two sons and were venting their lust on the three women of the place when our patrol arrived; in the other they had killed the householder and his wife, an elderly couple who had been granted their lands as freeholds by the late Lord Robert Bruce as a reward for decades of faithful service as his personal retainers. In both instances, the attackers were taken and hanged from the closest big tree, side by side and still wearing their identifying armour, and the corpses of their companions killed in the fight were hung up beside them.
Elsewhere on the patrol routes, there were numerous encounters with other bands of armed men, nine of those with groups of ten or more, on foot, and six more with mounted men-at-arms. The large groups and the mounted groups were challenged and destroyed, their animals, weapons, and armour confiscated and the dead laid out and left in the care of the survivors, whole and wounded, with a warning to whoever had sent them that no further abuses would be tolerated. Smaller parties, of ten men or fewer, if they appeared belligerent, were treated accordingly. If, on the other hand, they could explain themselves and their presence, and were able to convince their interrogators that they were being truthful and had broken no laws, then they might be permitted to go free. Many of them were, and were released bearing warnings about future penalties for breaking King John of Scotland’s laws concerning trespass and molestation of the lawful populace.
In all, seventy-eight men died that first day in June. None of them were ours. Thus the word was spread, in the name of King John Balliol, that a new presence was active in Scotland’s border country and to the north of it; a vengeful presence, bent upon the protection of the common folk.
For a time after that, the entire border territory lay quiet while the harriers who had provoked Will’s anger took stock of their situations and debated how next to proceed, for it transpired that they had larger matters than an outbreak of border warfare to concern them, and far more to worry about than the threats of a ragtag collection of bare-arsed outlaws snarling at them from the shadows of Selkirk Forest. And so, hesitant and probably afraid to aggravate a situation that they did not yet fully understand, the oppressors at the local levels of the reprisals held their forces in check while they waited for further instructions from their masters.