A Red Comyn at Roslin

24 February 1303 witnessed the battle of Roslin in Scotland. This was a victory for the Guardians of Scotland, led by John 'the Red' Comyn of Badenoch and Simon Fraser, and a much-needed morale booster at a grim time for the Scots. 

The Scottish wars had been raging since 1296, when Edward I invaded and deposed his vassal, John Balliol, King of Scots, later known as 'Toom Tabard' or the Empty Coat. Edward hurriedly imposed an administration and then raced back south to rescue his duchy of Gascony from the French. Within months, however, his colonial government in Scotland was in trouble. A full-scale revolt erupted, under the leadership of Andrew Moray and William Wallace.

By 1303 Moray was dead and Wallace little more than a fugitive. Leadership of the Guardians passed to John Comyn and his ally Fraser, who had once served Edward and fought on the English side at the battle of Falkirk. Such changes of allegiance were far from uncommon in the medieval era.

Comyn had proved an effective war-leader, holding the English at bay with inspired guerilla-style tactics. Edward was hampered by his war with France, but in 1303 he was able to negotiate a final peace with the French. This in turn enabled the English king to focus all his resources on Scotland.

Before coming north with the main army, Edward sent a force under John Segrave and Robert Clifford to reconnoitre. It was ambushed at Roslin in Mid-Lothian, apparently due to the treachery of a certain 'boy', whom Comyn had placed as a spy in the English camp.

The battle itself was a running skirmish, in which each of the three divisions of the English force were attacked and defeated in turn. Later Scottish chroniclers claimed that thousands of Englishmen were slaughtered, although the casualties were probably in the low hundreds. Chroniclers on both sides of the border (and everywhere else) routinely exaggerated battlefield casualties. 

Nonetheless, whatever the actual scale, Roslin showed the Scots they could defeat the English in open battle. In the short term it made little difference to Edward's plans. Apart from ransoming Segrave, captured in the fight, he carried on with his preparations and invaded Scotland in the autumn. 

This campaign ended with the surrender of the Guardians and what appeared to be a permanent reconquest of Scotland. Within two years, however, the Scots were once again in revolt under Robert de Bruce, and Edward's attempted settlement fell to pieces. He would die in 1307 in the Cumbrian marshes, with Scotland just out of reach.

There was a grim postscript to Roslin. One of the English captives was Ralf de Cofferer, a clerk of the English treasury. Fraser gave Ralf a furious lecture, accusing him of embezzling Fraser's wages when the Scot was in Edward's service. He was then murdered by one of Fraser's servants or 'ribalds', his hands cut off and left to bleed to death in the forest. It was hell in the diplomatic, as they say. 

Attached is a movie still of Comyn and Bruce at their famous meeting at Dumfries in 1306, shortly before Comyn aggressively fell on Bruce's knife.