The 1328 Treaty That Recognised Scottish Independence and Was Reversed Within Five Years

The Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton of March 1328 was the formal English recognition of Scottish independence under King Robert the Bruce — the political settlement that ended the long First War of Scottish Independence (1296–1328) that had been launched by Edward I in 1296 and that had substantially defined Anglo-Scottish military relations through the following thirty-two years.

The treaty was deeply unpopular in England. It was reversed within five years.

How it happened

The English Crown in 1328 was substantively in the hands of the regency of Isabella of France and her lover Roger Mortimer — the substantial regency that had been established after the 1326 Mortimer-Isabella invasion that deposed Edward II. The young Edward III was 15 and substantively without independent political agency. The substantial regency had inherited a politically and financially exhausted English Crown that substantively could not sustain continued military operations in Scotland.

Robert the Bruce was substantively in the opposite position. He had defeated the English at Bannockburn in 1314, had recovered Scottish territory through the subsequent decade, and had been substantively dictating the terms of cross-border raiding into northern England through 1327. He was 54, in poor health (probably leprosy), and substantively interested in securing a formal English recognition of Scottish independence that would substantively secure the Bruce dynastic succession for his infant son David.

The negotiations were rapid. The preliminary terms were substantively agreed at Edinburgh on 17 March 1328 and the final ratification was substantively executed at Northampton on 4 May 1328. The treaty contained four substantive provisions: (1) the English Crown substantively recognised Robert the Bruce as substantively legitimate king of an substantively independent Scotland; (2) the English-Scottish border was substantively restored to its pre-1296 line; (3) a £20,000 indemnity was paid by Scotland to England as compensation for substantive war damages; (4) a dynastic marriage was arranged between Joan of the Tower (Edward III’s sister, aged 7) and David Bruce (the future David II, aged 4).

The Joan-David wedding was substantively executed at Berwick in July 1328.

Why it failed

The English political class substantively rejected the treaty almost immediately. The Northampton parliament that had substantively ratified the treaty did so under regency pressure and substantively over baronial objection; the Bishop of Durham (whose diocese had been the principal target of the Scottish cross-border raids through the 1320s) substantively walked out of the Parliament rather than substantively assent to the treaty; the northern English barons substantively continued to dispute the 1328 settlement throughout the Mortimer-Isabella regency period.

The October 1330 Nottingham coup that William Montagu organised to give Edward III personal control of the English Crown substantively included the reversal of the 1328 treaty as one of its substantive policy objectives. Edward III was substantively 17 at the 1330 coup; he had been substantively brought up in the Plantagenet military-aristocratic tradition that substantively considered Scottish independence to be substantively a unfinished English military objective; he substantively did not consider himself substantively bound by the treaty his mother’s regency had substantively executed in his minority.

The English military reversal of the 1328 settlement substantively began in 1332 and substantively culminated in the Battle of Halidon Hill in July 1333, where Edward III substantively defeated a Scottish army under the regency of the young David II. The subsequent Second War of Scottish Independence (1332–1357) substantively undid the 1328 territorial settlement and substantively produced English military occupation of substantive Scottish lowlands through the subsequent two decades. The Scottish-French alliance of 1295 (the Auld Alliance) substantively re-engaged Scotland in the European conflict that would substantively become the Hundred Years’ War (and that the Capetian succession crisis of 1328 had already substantively triggered).

The Edinburgh-Northampton treaty substantively survives in the English legal tradition as a cautionary example of the political instability of regency-negotiated settlements. Its substantive dynastic marriage of Joan and David substantively held: David II was Scottish king from 1329 to 1371, Joan was queen consort throughout, and the Bruce dynastic line substantively continued through the subsequent generations until the 1371 succession to the Stewart dynasty.