The bishop who helped secure Scottish independence behind the scenes

Rather, they were the powers behind the throne, the men and women whose deeds and thoughts changed the course of Scottish history without them ever becoming king or queen.

In contemporary terms, you might think of them as influencers, though my historical choices were very much more substantial people than the gadfly social media creatures of today.

The first of these columns is devoted to a person that I have written about before – Bishop Robert Wishart of Glasgow, whose birthdate is unknown, but who died in 1316.

I have long been fascinated with Wishart, a true patriot and warrior priest who played a large part in securing Scotland’s Independence in the late 13th and early 14th centuries. In this column I will try and tell the story of his life, something I have not tried to do before, and will stick to the facts as I have discovered them, rather than the several legends that surround this remarkable prelate.

Among the numerous inaccuracies in Braveheart, there is no reference to the senior clergy of Scotland at the time of William Wallace’s uprising.

Other films also ignore this aspect of the life and careers of Wallace and Robert the Bruce, except the underrated The Bruce, the 1996 work of Bob Carruthers and David McWhinnie, who made the character of Bishop Wishart central to their movie – and I have to say Oliver Reed’s performance and the ferocious fight scenes were the best things in the film.

Ignoring the Scottish church’s role in the long and tortuous route to independence, which I always date to the Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton in 1328, is to leave out a great deal of the context of that struggle.

Bishop Robert Wishart played a vital role in securing Scottish independence and the preservation of the Scottish church as an independent body answerable only to the Pope in Rome, and as I shall show, the warrior bishop saw these two causes as being interlinked.

We know almost nothing of Wishart’s early life, but he seems to have been born around 1240 to the family of Wyscard or Wiseheart at Pitarrow near Laurencekirk, in what is now Aberdeenshire.

He appears to have been the son of one Adam Wishart, and was almost certainly educated for the priesthood first at Arbroath Abbey, and then on the Continent at either Paris or Bologna.

There was a Wishart family precedent for his entry into the clerical ranks, as his uncle William Wishart was already ordained, and would become Bishop of Glasgow designate and then St Andrews.

It was this Bishop Wishart who secured his nephew a posting as Archdeacon in his diocese, and when Bishop William moved to St Andrews in 1270 or 1271, Robert Wishart was elected to the See of Glasgow, though he was not consecrated until January, 1273, travelling to Rome in the intervening period. He would become the longest-serving bishop or archbishop of Glasgow and still holds that record.

In Glasgow he soon made his mark on the town, securing the funds and the wood – it came from Loch Lomondside – to continue the building of Glasgow Cathedral and start the construction of the first wooden bridge over the River Clyde in Glasgow.

He also carried out legal reforms and generally went about the business of a bishopric. Yet his political skills were already being appreciated at a higher level, and his advice was appreciated by Alexander III, King of Scots.

To Scotland’s great cost, Alexander was killed in March, 1286, when he fell from a cliff in Fife while riding to be with his new young wife.

Bishop Wishart had been one of his inner circle and now emerged as one of six Guardians – effectively a council of regents – who began to rule the country as the king’s granddaughter and heir Margaret was an infant in Norway where her father Eric II, Eirik Magnusson, was king; her mother, also Margaret, having died giving birth to her in 1283.

A REGENCY was needed while the Maid of Norway was too young to even travel to Scotland, so Wishart was put in charge of the lands south of the Forth, with Scotland’s most powerful baron, John Comyn, and James Stewart, 5th High Steward of Scotland, sharing that southern Guardianship. The other three Guardians were Bishop William Fraser of St Andrews, Earl Alexander Comyn and Donnchadh III, Earl of Fife.

Wishart was thus moving in high company, and with John Comyn and James Stewart he was entrusted with negotiating a treaty with England’s King Edward I that would secure Scotland’s independence, while arranging the marriage of the Maid of Norway.

All was agreed by the Treaty of Birgham in 1290, with Robert Wishart one of the signatories. Edward’s son, the future Edward II, and Margaret, Maid of Norway, would be married and while the two nations’ churches and parliaments would remain separate entities, it was Edward Longshanks’ intention that he and his successors would be overlords of Scotland.

When the Maid of Norway died uncrowned on Orkney during her trip home, the struggle to find her successor began, and the Houses of Bruce and Balliol became the chief competitors in what became known as the Great Cause.

It was agreed by the Guardians to ask Longshanks to judge the Cause, and on May 10, 1291, at Norham-on-Tweed, Edward called a meeting of the senior Scottish clergy plus the barons and the claimants for the crown.

After he haughtily declared himself Lord Paramount, it was Bishop Wishart who gave the Scots’ reply: “But where it pleased the King to speak of a right of supremacy over the Kingdom of Scotland, it was sufficiently known that Scotland from the first foundation of the State had been a free and independent kingdom, and not subject to any other power whatsoever.

“Howbeit, the present occasion hath bred some distinction of minds, all true-hearted Scots will stand for the liberty of their country to the death, for they esteem their liberty more precious than their lives, and in that quarrel will neither separate nor divide.”

All eight claimants to the crown then proceeded to do homage to Edward, and eventually Longshanks decided that John Balliol should be King of Scots. Like Alexander III, Balliol came heavily to reply on the Bishop of Glasgow, who was meanwhile joining with Bishop Fraser to plead the case of a separate Scottish church in succession to Pope Nicholas IV, the short-reigning Pope Celestine V, and later Pope Boniface VIII.

The latter sided with the Scots clergy, who had previously feared being taken over by the Archbishop of York, John le Romeyn (Romanus).

It was Wishart who advised John Balliol to make the Auld Alliance treaty with France, and Edward wrote to Pope Boniface to complain: “Bishop Wishart, without hesitation or compunction, aided and abetted the new king in all his treasons. It was the bishop who instigated Balliol to ally himself with the King of France, to which alliance the bishop affixed his seal.

Again, Balliol made war against Edward principally by the aid and assistance of the bishop, who was continually helping and inciting Balliol to commit arsons, robberies, murders, and as many ravages as he possibly could in the English territory; all which matters are public and notorious as well in England as in Scotland.”

As a result of the Auld Alliance, Edward Longshanks invaded Scotland in 1296 and cruelly sacked Berwick-upon-Tweed before defeating the Scottish army at Dunbar, after which he forced leading Scots to make this oath of loyalty, which Bishop Wishart duly signed: “I shall be true and loyal and I will keep faith and loyalty to the King of England and to his heirs of life and of members and of earthly honour, against all persons who can live or die, and never will I bear arms for any one, nor will I give advice or aid against him, nor against his heirs in any case which can happen, and I will truly acknowledge and truly perform the services which belong to the tenements which I claim to hold of him. So may God help me and the Saints.”

He did not mean a word of it. Ever afterwards, Wishart would say the oath was invalid as it was signed under duress, and in early 1297, when William Wallace and Andrew Murray (de Moray) led their famous uprising against the English forces of occupation, Wishart donned his armour, and though there is no direct evidence of this, he probably blessed Wallace and became his clerical sponsor.

In any case, he paid dearly for supporting Wallace. After the Capitulation of Irvine in July 1297, when nobles led by Robert the Bruce and including Wishart surrendered rather than fight far superior English numbers, Wallace turned on Wishart and ransacked his home in Glasgow.

The defeat of the Scots at Falkirk in 1298 saw Wishart, then imprisoned by the English, transfer his support to Robert the Bruce and though he swore loyalty to Edward – five times in all – there was no doubt that Wishart wanted Robert to be king. In turn, the Bruce swore to uphold the independence of the Scottish church – which he did.

The Pope ordered Longshanks to release Wishart, which he did, after making another oath of fealty that was duly renounced, causing the Pope to write the following to the Bishop: “I have heard with astonishment that you, as a rock of offence and a stone of stumbling, have been the prime instigator and promoter of the fatal disputes which prevail between the Scottish nation and Edward, King of England, my dearly-beloved son in Christ, to the displeasing of the divine majesty, to the hazard of your own honour and salvation, and to the inexpressible detriment of the Kingdom of Scotland.

“If these things are so, you have rendered yourself odious to God and man. It befits you to repent, and, by your most earnest endeavours after peace, to strive to obtain forgiveness.”

Wishart continued to support the Bruce, even after the would-be king committed sacrilege, by murdering John Comyn in a Dumfries monastery called Greyfriars on February 10, 1306.

In contravention of all known canon law, Wishart gave absolution to Robert the Bruce and calling on the realm of Scotland to support him, Wishart arranged with Bishop William de Lamberton of St Andrews to have the king crowned at Scone on March 25.

Bishop Wishart even loaned the Bruce some of his robes in order that he look kingly.

Just three months later, Bruce’s forces were defeated by the far larger English army at the Battle of Methven, and in the aftermath Wishart was captured. Only the fact that he was a bishop saved him from execution.

There then began eight long years of imprisonment at Porchester Castle, where his health failed, and he became blind.

Edward II refused to release him and even wrote to the Pope to say Wishart “had stirred up the inhabitants of Scotland to rebellion, broken his oaths of fealty and homage, and been the source of many conspiracies”.

After the victory at Bannockburn, Wishart was one of the first people to be exchanged for English captives by King Robert. Bishop Wishart returned in triumph to Glasgow, where he quietly lived out the rest of his life until he died on November 23, 1316.

Next week, I will profile two churchmen who were also powers behind Robert the Bruce’s throne – Bishop William de Lamberton and Abbot Bernard of Arbroath – and I will examine the latter’s claim to be the author of the Declaration of Arbroath.