BRUCE, Robert
King Robert I, now known as Robert the Bruce. His father, also Robert, was Earl of Annandale. His grandfather, also Robert, was known as the Competitor from the way he assiduously pursued the Bruce rights to the throne of Scotland, passing the torch on to his grandson. While Edward II vacillated and wilted under setbacks, the harried Bruce shouldered on; the story of the spider, though apocryphal, shows that the spirit of the man served as an uplifting moral message for later generations. The Curse of Malachy was a very real threat to the Bruces, silly though it may seem to our twenty-first-century irreligious sophistication, while the illness Bruce suffered was a continual worry. It may well have been leprosy – there are many forms of it – or a simple skin complaint, but investigations of his skull reveal extensive damage to the right cheek and a considerable wound injury above and below the left eye, though he was not blinded. The Pilkington statue at the Bannockburn Heritage Centre may well show the glory of the king, but the reality seems to have been painful, ugly and, towards the end of his life (in his mid-fifties), his face may well have been blurred and coarsened by illness as well. Myth and legend have similarly blurred the Hero King, bathing him in a golden glow that masks the reality of both appearance and character.
CAMPBELL, Dougald, Laird of Craignish
The 6th Laird of Craignish, the lands on the wild Argyll peninsula, is in his early forties at the time of Bannockburn and heading off to support his chief, Neil Campbell. The Campbell of Craignish shields are defiantly recognizable and much copied by re-enactors, even over the famous black galley on gold of the MacDonalds of Angus Og. Described as gyronny of eight or and sable, the shield hanging from the mast of a lymphad sable, it simply means a series of eight triangles, alternated yellow and black, on a shield seemingly hung from a horizontal black bar. It is, in fact, an even older runic symbol which gives more than a hint at the Craignish Campbells’ Viking ancestry.
CAMPBELL, Sir Neil
Known as Niall mac Cailein (Neil, Colin’s son), he was a firm adherent of Edward I, having sworn fealty to him on the Ragman Roll of 1296. A decade later, however, with Edward handing Campbell lands to English knights, Neil Campbell was ripe for rebellion and finally joined Robert the Bruce in 1306. He was one of the few men who stuck with the ill-fated King Robert following defeats at Methven and Dalrigh. Eventually, as a reward, Neil Campbell received Bruce’s sister, Mary, as a wife and the lands confiscated from the turncoat David Strathbogie, Earl of Atholl (see below). His son, Iain, eventually became earl.
CLARE, Sir Gilbert de
Earl of Gloucester, whose mother was Joan of Acre, Edward I’s sister. Being so closely related to Edward II, he was yet another of those favourites who replaced Gaveston. Aged only twenty-three, he was given command of the army over the head of Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford (see above), who was Constable of England. In fact, Edward fudged the issue by declaring them joint commanders, which was a recipe for disaster since they disliked one another. Unhorsed and barely rescued on the first day of Bannockburn, Gloucester was killed the next day, though the actual circumstances remain unclear.
CLIFFORD, Sir Robert
One of Edward I’s trusted commanders and a member of the original gilded youth of the Feast of the Swans in 1306 – but, eight years on, the youth and gilt are wearing thin on all that band. Clifford and Sir Henry Percy were given the task of subduing the initial Scottish revolt and negotiated Bruce and other rebel Scots nobles back into the ‘King’s Peace’ in 1297, but could not overcome Wallace. Clifford also brought a retinue to fight at Falkirk which included knights from Cumbria and Scotland, one of the latter being a certain Sir Roger Kirkpatrick of Auchen Castle, Annandale, and the ‘real’ Kirkpatrick who murdered the Red Comyn. Clifford was at the Siege of Caerlavrock Castle in 1300, according to the Caerlavrock Roll – the list of knights present – and at Bannockburn in 1314, where he was killed.
CRAW, Sim
A semi-fictional character. Sim of Leadhouse is mentioned only once in history, as the inventor of the cunning scaling ladders with which James Douglas took Roxburgh by stealth in 1314. Here, he is Hal of Herdmanston’s right-hand man, older than Hal – who is himself old – powerfully built and favouring a big arbalest, a steel-constructed crossbow spanned (cocked) using a winding mechanism and usually used in sieges.