6 - A Nation of Knights? Chivalry and the Community of the Realm in Barbour’s Bruce

Summary

‘There is a moment in the lives of reinvented lands’, wrote Alan Cowell, reflecting on the idea of a new Libya in the International Herald Tribune, ‘when their liberation becomes the founding legend, shaping the outlook of generations to come; when the heady moment of freedom offers the first chapter of a new national narrative.’ Scotland’s so-called wars of independence from England have long been considered ‘the first chapter’ in the ‘new national narrative’. The historiography flourishing in the wake of these wars celebrated Robert Bruce as a freedom fighter and crafted an identity out of war, one that remains recognizable to this day. Dominating this tradition of writing is Barbour’s Bruce. As the earliest extant text in Scots and the story of the success of the Bruce dynasty in seizing the throne of Scotland and securing Scottish autonomy from claims of English lordship, Barbour’s Bruce is a seminal text for Scottish historical writing. It is a ‘founding legend’ and it centres on a Scottish community of knights in service to the king. This concept of the community of the realm is a dominant feature in late medieval Scottish historiography but what precisely it entailed is contested. This chapter discusses the ideas of community and kingdom in Barbour’s Bruce to clarify the constitutional identities at play in this text. In particular, this chapter considers how they might be read and determines how far the representation of the past political community was a construction of a nation of knights.

Barbour’s Bruce is not a national history as the genre has become defined. It does not start with an origin myth in a far off distant past, nor does it chronicle a nation’s history from time immemorial. It chronicles contemporary events. It is written – and this is explicitly stated in the poem – in the tradition of romance, and it is concerned with chivalry. Romance and chivalry are the defining characteristics of this text. Nevertheless, Barbour’s Bruce is an instance of national historical writing, and arguably the most important instance for Scottish historical writing. The text functions as a foundation narrative for later Scottish histories and chronicles, including national histories. It is the master narrative for any account of the reign of Robert I. It used (or it may be) the lost ‘history’ of Robert I.