St Sixtus, pope, martyr, 2nd century. Hundred and twenty martyrs of Hadiab in Presia, 345. St Celestine, pope, 432. St Prudentius, bishop of Troyes, 861. St Celsus, archbishop of Armagh, 1120. St William, abbot of Eskille, confessor, 1203.
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Born. – Jean Baptiste Rousseau, French poet, 1669, Paris; James Mill, historian and political economist, 1773.
Died. – Laura de Noves, the subject of Petrarch’s amatory poetry, 1348, Avignon; Sanzio Raffaelle, painter, 1520; Albert Dürer, artist, 1528, Nuremberg; David Blondel, French historical writer, 1655, Amsterdam.
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On this Day in Other Sources.
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The 6th of April, this year 1306, Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick, was solemnly crowned at Scone; in memorial whereof, [John de] Fordun, the prior [of St. Andrews], has left us these rhymes.
In the year thirteen hundred and six,
Robert de Bruce, of kingly stock, was found,
Received at Scone Scotland’s king was crowned.
This is in April the 6th of the month.
– Historical Works, pp.88-104.
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It was in the spacious buildings of this great monastery [of Arbroath] that Robert Bruce, in April 1320, assembled the Parliament which asserted in such vigorous language, in their letter to the Pope, the freedom of their country.*
– Sketches, pp.144-172.
* The Declaration of Arbroath, of which a full translation can be found attached to Robert I.’s Chapter from Balfour’s ‘Historical Works.’
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Original Drypoint by George D. Guthrie, “Arbroath Abbey.”
Donated (05/04/2019) by Julie & Hilton Eeles.
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King Robert being at Berwick, Pope John [XXII.] did send a Nuncio to him, desiring him that he would leave off the destroying any more of the King of England’s dominions, until the Pope was fully informed of the equity and pretended title of the English King to the crown of Scotland: the King gave the Nuncio many fair words, and presently convened the nobility and gentry at the monastery of Arbroath, [6th of] April [1320], where they wrote, in a letter [the Declaration of Arbroath*] to the Pope, a particular information of the estate of the kingdom, since King Fergus [Mòr Mac Earca]‘s days; as also of the pretended title of the tyrant of England, King Edward I., and his successor, how unjust and foolish it was, contrary [to] the laws both of God and men.
– Historical Works, pp.88-104.
* Translation of the Declaration of Arbroath:
“To the most Holy Father and Lord in Christ, the Lord John, by divine providence Supreme Pontiff of the Holy Roman and Universal Church, his humble and devout sons Duncan, Earl of Fife, Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray, Lord of Man and of Annandale, Patrick Dunbar, Earl of March, Malise, Earl of Strathearn, Malcolm, Earl of Lennox, William, Earl of Ross, Magnus, Earl of Caithness and Orkney, and William, Earl of Sutherland; Walter, Steward of Scotland, William Soules, Butler of Scotland, James, Lord of Douglas, Roger Mowbray, David, Lord of Brechin, David Graham, Ingram Umfraville, John Menteith, guardian of the earldom of Menteith, Alexander Fraser, Gilbert Hay, Constable of Scotland, Robert Keith, Marischal of Scotland, Henry Sinclair, John Graham, David Lindsay, William Oliphant, Patrick Graham, John Fenton, William Abernethy, David Wemyss, William Mushet, Fergus of Ardrossan, Eustace Maxwell, William Ramsay, William Mowat, Alan Murray, Donald Campbell, John Cameron, Reginald Cheyne, Alexander Seton, Andrew Leslie and Alexander Straiton, and the other barons and freeholders and the whole community of the realm of Scotland send all manner of filial reverence, with devout kisses of his blessed feet.
Most Holy Father, we know and from the chronicles and books of the ancients we find that among other famous nations our own, the Scots, has been graced with widespread renown. It journeyed from Greater Scythia by way of the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Pillars of Hercules, and dwelt for a long course of time in Spain among the most savage peoples, but nowhere could it be subdued by any people, however barbarous. Thence it came, twelve hundred years after the people of Israel crossed the Red Sea, to its home in the west where it still lives today. The Britons it first drove out, the Picts it utterly destroyed, and, even though very often assailed by the Norwegians, the Danes and the English, it took possession of that home with many victories and untold efforts; and, as the histories of old time bear witness, they have held it free of all servitude ever since. In their kingdom there have reigned one hundred and thirteen kings of their own royal stock, the line unbroken by a single foreigner.
The high qualities and merits of these people, were they not otherwise manifest, shine forth clearly enough from this: that the King of kings and Lord of lords, our Lord Jesus Christ, after His Passion and Resurrection, called them, even though settled in the uttermost parts of the earth, almost the first to His most holy faith. Nor did He wish them to be confirmed in that faith by merely anyone but by the first of His Apostles – by calling, though second or third in rank – the most gentle Saint Andrew, the Blessed Peter’s brother, and desired him to keep them under his protection as their patron for ever.
The Most Holy Fathers your predecessors gave careful heed to these things and strengthened this same kingdom and people with many favours and numerous privileges, as being the special charge of the Blessed Peter’s brother. Thus our people under their protection did indeed live in freedom and peace up to the time when that mighty prince the King of the English, Edward, the father of the one who reigns today, when our kingdom had no head and our people harboured no malice or treachery and were then unused to wars or invasions, came in a guise of a friend and ally to harass them as an enemy. The deeds of cruelty, massacre, violence, pillage, arson, imprisoning prelates, burning down monasteries, robbing and killing monks and nuns and yet other outrages without number which he committed against our people, sparing neither age nor sex, religion nor rank, no-one could describe nor fully imagine unless he had seen them with his own eyes.
But from these countless evils we have been set free, by the help of Him who though He afflicts yet heals and restores, by our most tireless prince, King and lord, the lord Robert. He, that his people and his heritage might be delivered out of the hands of our enemies, bore cheerfully toil and fatigue, hunger and peril, like another Maccabaeus or Joshua. Him, too, divine providence, the succession to his right according to our laws and customs which we shall maintain to the death, and the due consent and assent of us all have made our prince and king. To him, as to the man by whom salvation has been wrought unto our people, we are bound both by his right and by his merits that our freedom may be still maintained, and by him, come what may, we mean to stand.
Yet if he should give up what he has begun, seeking to make us or our kingdom subject to the King of England or the English, we should exert ourselves at once to drive him out as our enemy and a subverter of his own right and ours, and make some other man who was well able to defend us our King; for, as long as a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be subjected to the lordship of the English. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.
Therefore it is, Reverend Father and Lord, that we beseech your Holiness with our most earnest prayers and suppliant hearts, inasmuch as you will in your sincerity and goodness consider all this, that, since with Him Whose vice-gerent on earth you are there is neither weighing nor distinction of Jew and Greek, Scotsman or Englishman, you will look with the eyes of a father on the troubles and privations brought by the English upon us and upon the Church of God. May it please you to admonish and exhort the King of the English, who ought to be satisfied with what belongs to him since England used once to be enough for seven kings or more, to leave us Scots in peace, who live in this poor little Scotland, beyond which there is no dwelling-place at all, and covet nothing but our own. We are sincerely willing to do anything for him, having regard to our condition, that we can, to win peace for ourselves.
This truly concerns you, Holy Father, since you see the savagery of the heathen raging against the Christians, as the sins of Christians have indeed deserved, and the frontiers of Christendom being pressed inward every day; and how much it will tarnish your Holiness’s memory if (which God forbid) the Church suffers eclipse or scandal in any branch of it during your time, you must perceive. Then rouse the Christian princes who for false reasons pretend that they cannot go to the help of the Holy Land because of wars they have on hand with their neighbours. The real reason that prevents them is that in making war on their smaller neighbours they find a readier advantage and weaker resistance. But how cheerfully our lord the King and we too would go there if the King of the English would leave us in peace, He from Whom nothing is hidden well knows; and we profess and declare it to you as the Vicar of Christ and to all Christendom.
But if your Holiness puts too much faith in the tales the English tell and will not give sincere belief to all this, nor refrain from favouring them to our undoing, then the slaughter of bodies, the perdition of souls, and all the other misfortunes that will follow, inflicted by them on us and by us on them, will, we believe, be surely laid by the Most High to your charge.
To conclude, we are and shall ever be, as far as duty calls us, ready to do your will in all things, as obedient sons to you as His Vicar, and to Him as the Supreme King and Judge we commit the maintenance of our cause, casting our cares upon Him and firmly trusting that He will inspire us with courage and bring our enemies to nothing.
May the Most High preserve you to His Holy Church in holiness and health for many days to come.
Given at the monastery of Arbroath in Scotland on the sixth day of the month of April in the year of grace thirteen hundred and twenty and the fifteenth year of the reign of our King aforesaid.”
– Translation compiled by Dr Alan Borthwick, National Records of Scotland, June 2005.
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Among the lands held in common by the citizens, besides the Easter and Wester Commons, were the Burgh Muir, and the district known as Garngad Hill. For some time after the flight of Beton, his faithful steward William Walker, continued to manage the temporalities, and to enter the “Rentallers;” but about the year 1568 the magistrates – following the example of the Duke of Chastelherault when he seized Lochwood – took possession of the common lands – as they did of many other properties and endowments belonging to the Church – and proceeded to dispose of them in lots to the inhabitants. Walker, whose heart was sorely grieved at this spoliation of his lord’s benefice, wrote to the archbishop, then in France, that he had been “in great trublis, as is knawin utuartlie be the changeing of the colouris of my hair qlk was blak and now is quhyte.” In this curious letter, which is dated 6th April, 1569, Walker tells his master that he had been required and commanded by the provost and bailies of Glasgow to become a burgess, which he had refused, and in consequence of that refusal, he says, “I can in no wayis haif justice ministrat unto me in quhatsumever actioun I haif ado befoir the provest and baillies.” He goes on to tell that “al the borrow muir of Glasgw on the Southe syde of the towne, and als Garngad hill on the north part of the toune, ar distribuit be provest baillies and communitie of the towne to the inhabitaris thairof, every ane his awin portioun conforme to his degrie, and hes revin it oute and manuris it this ʒeir instantlie, bot I wald have na parte thairof qll [until] it plies God and ʒoure L. to make my parte, be ressoun I knew thai hade na power to deill ʒour L. loands w’oute sum consent of ʒoure L. or sum utheris in ʒoure L. name.”1
– Old Glasgow, pp.175-181.
1 Papers in possession of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland. Contribution to Maitland Club of the late Andrew Macgeorge, Esq., p. 24
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“We might from these circumstances,” says Chalmers, “suppose that the people of Ayrshire would concur zealously in the Revolution of 1688. As one of the western shires, Ayrshire sent its full proportion of armed men to Edinburgh to protect the convention of Estates. On the 6th of April, 1689, the forces that had come from the western counties, having received thanks from the convention for their seasonable service they immediately departed with their arms to their respective homes. They were offered some gratification; but they would receive none; saying that they came to save and serve their country, but not to enrich themselves at the nation’s expense. It was at the same time ordered, ‘that the inhabitants of the town of Ayr should be kept together till further orders.’ On the 14th of May, arms were ordered to be given to Lord Bargeny, an Ayrshire baronet. On the 25th of May, in answer to a letter from the Earl of Eglinton, the convention ordered, ‘that the heritors and fencible men in the shire of Ayr be instantly raised and commanded in conformity to the appointment of the Estates.’ But of such proofs of the revolutionary principles of Ayrshire enough! The men of Ayr not only approved of the Revolution; but they drew their swords in support of its establishment and principles. On that memorable occasion the governors were not only changed; but new principles were adopted and better practices were introduced: and the Ayrshire people were gratified, by the abolition of episcopacy, and by the substitution of presbyterianism in its room, which brought with it its old maxims of intolerance and its invariable habit of persecution.” – [Caledonia, vol. iii. pp. 473, 474.]
– Gazetteer of Scotland, pp.89-92.
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