Battle site of Roslin (1303) ***
Region: Edinburgh
© Copyright Jim Barton and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence
Description:
This was one of the largest battles (1303) within Scotland during the First Scottish War of Independence and strangely almost unknown.
The English host had arrived in Melrose, and there was divided into three equal divisions which were commanded by Sir John Segrave, Ralph Manton and Sir Robert Neville.
Sir Robert Neville was to attack Borthwick Castle, near Feshiebridge, which was being held by Sir Gilbert Hay. A force under Sir Ralph Confrey was sent to secure Dalhousie Castle, while the remaining army, under Sir John, assisted by Ralph de Manton, the English paymaster, marched on Rosslyn Castle. Their timing could not have been worse. First, Sir John’s men were surrounded by the advancing Scots, who charged into them in the darkness. On the far side of the castle promontory, the Scots then formed a battle line and the English division approaching from the north was met with a volley of arrows forcing it to swerve towards a steep ravine with the river below. The conclusion that followed was fast and violent. The Scots, who knew their territory well, took up a position at the top of the ravine and pushed the English into the gorge where their ranks were rapidly decimated.
Although the battle of Roslin is not nearly as well known as Wallace’s victory at Stirling Bridge six years earlier or Bruce’s triumph at Bannockburn eleven years later, it was equally as bloody as both, if not more so, as names around the village testify: Shinbones Field, where bones of the dead continue to be unearthed; the Hewan, where a burial mound remains; and the Stinking Rig, where the smell of decomposing corpses lingered on for decades. Tradition has it that the Kilburn, a rivulet which runs off the North Esk, ran red with blood for three days following the carnage.
There is however a completely different account of what became later known as the Battle of Roslin.
Copied from the website of Scottish BDM: Articles | Scotland Births, Deaths And Marriages
It was common for Edward to send or even personally lead large armies into Scotland every summer, as winter warfare was not normally considered feasible in Great Britain. The winter of 1302-3 was to be somewhat different. Sir John, the 2nd Baron of Segrave (modern Seagrave in central England), was a distinguished military leader appointed command of the Berwick Castle at the Scottish frontier in August 1302. This was the period of a temporary ceasefire with the Scots, which was to end on the 30th of November. While eagerly waiting for the truce to end, Sir John Segrave received the command of all English operations in Scotland for the time being, giving him an opportunity to carry out his plans. It is likely that Sir Segrave was already sending patrols and small forays into the Scottish territory at the peak of winter, but he undertook a large raid en force only in late-February, which although still pretty early for military operations, was nevertheless, still more tolerable than a campaign in December or January. Segrave’s impatience to show his mettle has intrigued popular historians over centuries, giving rise to a range of fictitious stories about his motives, as we shall see soon.
The Battle
Presumably only a few days after his departure from Berwick Castle, Sir John Segrave had reached the vicinity of Edinburgh, where he camped for some time at Roslin (11 kilometres to the south). Unknown to him, however, a considerable Scottish force under John Comyn (a former Guardian of Scotland), assisted by Simon Fraser (a warlike but untrustworthy knight), had started following him and were just waiting for such an opportunity to arise. These Scots launched a surprise attack on Segrave’s camp at night. The incursion was a great success, English casualties were high and even Sir Segrave himself was captured for the time being.
Nevertheless, the English force was only shocked, not defeated. They retaliated strongly and presumably within the next few days (or even within a day), two other skirmishes took place, during one of which Sir Segrave was liberated from Scottish imprisonment, but at a high cost. Segrave decided he had had enough and returned to England without achieving any notable feat. The role the notorious William Wallace played in this action is not precisely known, although his presence has been credibly attested in the sources. It is not impossible that Wallace only fought as a regular knight, since he had returned from his long diplomatic trip to Europe only a short while ago and had been intentionally avoiding any important post after the disaster at Falkirk some five years ago. The battle took place on the first Sunday of the Lent, 1303.
It is interesting to note that Sir John Comyn (known as “The Red”) is the same Scottish leader who later joined Edward I, betrayed future-King Robert Bruce and was killed by him in anger, an event which triggered Bruce’s arduous struggle for the restoration of Scottish independence.
Legacy
The Battle of Roslin was a small series of skirmishes, notable only because of the capture of Sir Segrave and the participation of William Wallace. Surprisingly, however, starting with the late-fourteenth century chronicler John of Fordun, the action was already being dramatised to an unexpected extent. This tendency reached its peak with the Scotichronicon of the next century, where Roslin was converted into an unprecedented clash of huge English and Scottish armies, which results in a miraculous victory for Scotland. Its background was turned into a twisted story from a novel; it was alleged that actually, Sir John Segrave had fallen in love with a French royal lady, Margaret Ramsey de Dalhousie, who eventually ended up marrying a Scottish lord, Henry Saint Clair of Rosslyn. Infuriated, Segrave allegedly requested to be granted permission to campaign against St. Clair, a request to which Edward answered by entrusting him with a force of over thirty thousand, the largest army ever assembled in Great Britain in centuries! Even more incredibly, more than 90% of this army is supposed to have been killed by the Scots. Even ignoring these bizarre figures and all the romanticised stories surrounding Roslin, it is clear from the primary sources that the action was little more than a small episode in the countless such annual raids during much of the period of the Scottish Wars of Independence.