The Bruce dynasty, Becket and Scottish pilgrimage to Canterbury, c.1178-c.1404

This paper seeks to question the assumption that the outbreak of prolonged Anglo-Scottish war in 1296 brought an abrupt decline in Scottish interest in St Thomas, his shrine at Canterbury and the great abbey dedicated to him in Scotland at Arbroath. A survey of Scottish devotion to Becket after 1296 reveals that in fact the interest of the monarchy and certain sections of Scottish society intensified. For the two Bruce kings, devotion to Becket developed a double importance although in very different political contexts. For Robert I (1306-29) St Thomas, Canterbury and Arbroath served as both a focus of personal faith and of strategic observances in the struggle against England. However, for David II (1329-71), captured in battle against England in 1346, such observances also became a central feature of attempts to persuade his subjects of the value of closer Anglo-Scottish relations: David's reign was marked by a surge in pilgrimage to Canterbury by Scottish royals, nobles, clerics and ordinary lay folk. Had David lived longer and/or produced a Bruce heir, continued Scottish devotion to Becket might have formed the basis of far more amicable Anglo-Scottish relations than would be the norm under Stewart kings of Scots after 1371.

by modern scholars. 1 This was clearly a pattern of entreaty of saintly intercession which was sustained well beyond the initial late twelfth-and early thirteenth-century flurry of miracula and hagiographical writing associated with Becket and Canterbury. Moreover, although the records of Canterbury Cathedral and the English crown are weighted towards evidence for upper class interaction with this saint and shrine, there is sufficient data, too, to allow historians and archaeologists to envisage a continuing stream of devotion by the lower social orders of England's neighbour realms in addition to, of course, the ordinary devout people of Canterbury's own hinterland and the wider English kingdom.
It should, then, come as little surprise to identify a remarkable degree of sustained Scottish interest in this famous pilgrimage venue and the potentia of its chief saint. Indeed, modern scholars have already detailed the profound interest shown in Becket by Scotland's crown, leading nobles and churchmen, during the reigns of William I (1165-1214), Alexander II (1214-49) and Alexander III (1249-86): this was a period, really, of relative peace between Scotland and England, though often uneasy. 2 This Scottish devotion to St Thomas centred not only upon periodic pilgrimages to Canterbury itself but also the foundation and support in this period of a major monastic house dedicated to the martyr saint at Arbroath in coastal Angus (Forfarshire). Moreover, this upper class Scottish observance of Becket was matched by the devotions of lesser Scots: this is suggested by the discovery of two thirteenth-century ampullae of Becket's shrine oil e water mixed with his blood and brains e in excavations at Perth in central Scotland. 3 However, recent studies have also remarked in passing that this Scottish focus on Becket was apparently revived after the six decades of the Wars of Scottish Independence or Succession (1296-1357). 4 Robert Bruce's son, David II of Scotland (1329-71), was released from captivity in England in October 1357 upon the agreement of a truce: thereafter, ongoing talks towards a full Anglo-Scottish peace heralded a striking and regular traffic in safe-conduct requests by notable Scots seeking to undertake pilgrimage to and/or through England, very often with the stated destination of Becket's tomb at Canterbury. But this devotional travel is seen to collapse with the resumption of more open, if erratic, Anglo-Scottish border hostilities after the death of Edward III in 1377: such pilgrimage only resurfaced thereafter, it seemed, during truces and through the activities of particular noble families, like the border earls of Douglas and Dunbar/March, or in the reigns of particular kings, for example James I (1406-37) and James IV (1488-1513), who e like David II e had English wives. 5 A similar pattern of late fourteenthand fifteenth-century decline in Scottish interest in Canterbury and Becket might also be posited at the outset for Scotland's ordinary population, alongside a concomitant growth in interest in 'native' Scottish saints like Ninian of Whithorn in Galloway and Duthac of Tain in Ross: this reflected the further cooling of Anglo-Scottish, 'nationalist' relations during the reigns of the first Stewart kings of Scots. 6 At the same time, the fifteenth century saw a shift in favour away from Becket and instead towards long-distance pilgrimage to other, increasingly more fashionable tombs in England, for example to the shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham in Norfolk or the Holy Blood relics at Hailes Abbey in Gloucestershire: Scots may have preferred after c.1400 to integrate visits to these sites, rather than to Canterbury, with their spiritual journeys abroad to, say, the tomb of St John at Amiens, St James at Compostela or to the Holy Land. 7 Nevertheless, scholars have as yet not investigated in detail and context the range of motivations which had drawn Scots south during this most dramatic of centuries c.1286-c.1406, to seek passage to Becket's tomb and its associated houses, altars and relics at Canterbury (including those of St Augustine, St Dunstan, St Andrew and the Virgin Mary). The recent suggestion that the cult of St Thomas, and in particular its major Scottish dedication foundation of Arbroath Abbey, became something of a 'liability' in Scotland after Edward I's invasion of 1296 and thus declined in popularity would seem to be contradicted by the resurgence of pilgrimage to Becket's tomb once a prolonged period of peace was restored in 1357. 8 Did the Scottish pilgrims of the second half of the fourteenth century still seek to make their long and often hazardous journey south for the varied reasons of genuine piety and penance, politics, diplomacy and personal gain which had characterised their devotion before 1296? If so, is this evidence that Scottish interest in Canterbury and St Thomas and his associated cult sites had not waned despite a half century and more of intense and seemingly increasingly ethnicallymotivated war and the end of the genuinely cross-border royal, aristocratic and ecclesiastical land-owning class and culture of pre-1296? Or is it the case that the long national conflict and dynastic politics of the period caused such ostensibly religious traffic south to be further secularised: that is, politicised or otherwise altered, masking motives for contact with southern England which were in reality purely diplomatic, territorial, military or economic? If so, does this mean that Scottish pilgrimage to Canterbury could not be a spiritual way of repairing or managing relations between the two realms in the later fourteenth century?
At the outset, any suggestion that Anglo-Scottish war after 1296 should have drawn Scots to become increasingly equivocal toward St Thomas (and thus Canterbury) seems problematic. From the first, Scotland's monarchy, leading nobles and ecclesiastics may have had decidedly mixed motives for devotion to Becket. Scotland's strongest association with the martyr was, after all, born of defeat in battle against England following the capture of William I at Alnwick in 1174. That reverse had resulted in the imposition of the feudal overlordship terms of the Treaty of Falaise upon William's person, heirs and realm by Henry II of England whose knights had murderously rid him of his turbulent priest four years earlier. 9 The legend that Henry had made a penitent journey to Canterbury and prayed before Becket's remains on the very day of William's invasion of Northumberland in collusion with the French, and thus affected the 'miracle' of the Scottish king's defeat and subsequent punishment along with his realm, might easily have marked out Scottish investment from 1178 in Arbroath Abbey, dedicated to Becket, as  In this context St Thomas might simply have become a hate figure  or alternatively a transparent propaganda tool for the Scots in their attempts to undo England's  imposed feudal superiority in the eyes of the papacy and secular Europe. However, William I was a prominent participant in and proponent of the Anglo-Norman cross-border culture of the day e noted by English chroniclers for his 'French' manners and preferences as king, just as he would later be celebrated for his genuine piety and humility. 10 This Scottish king may, besides, have had private as well as public connections with Becket. The tale recorded by the thirteenth-century Chronicle of Melrose, that William and Becket had been schoolboy companions, may have been a later Scottish design to save face in the wake of 1174. Yet William's intense investment in his new Tironesian foundation at Arbroath, as a daughter of the Scottish border abbey of Kelso, suggests a great depth of personal faith in the saint's powers as well as, perhaps, a genuine sense of penitence for his invasion. 11 Arbroath quickly became Scotland's second-wealthiest monastic institution (behind the Augustinian priory at St Andrews) and was undeniably to be the single largest new foundation in Becket's honour throughout Europe, a remarkable achievement for a realm as relatively poor as Scotland. The abbey was readily accepted into Scotland's growing national church network, receiving endowments from the nobility of Forfarshire and of neighbouring Aberdeenshire and Fifeshire as well as successive Scottish and English kings. The abbey then formed strong associations with many of Scotland's other key religious foundations e both secular and regular. 12 Not least, Arbroath's connection with Canterbury shared common ground with both Dunfermline Abbey and St Andrews priory cathedral, Fifeshire houses which had both been nurtured by the two most-celebrated royal patrons of Scottish monasticism, Queen/St Margaret (d.1093) and David I (1124-53): they had recruited personnel from friendly archbishops of Canterbury for these Fife foundations. But Arbroath also shared common features with the border abbey of Melrose and Glasgow cathedral where Jocelin (d.1199), as Cistercian abbot then bishop at each in turn during William I's reign, developed his institutions and their buildings, cults and estates by consciously emulating the potent Canterbury/Becket model. 13 Such adaptation of Canterbury's influence by the Scottish ecclesia would continue despite the ongoing role of that see's prelates as England's metropolitan, along with their counterparts at York and English royal backing, in continuing to claim English ecclesiastical jurisdiction over Scotland's clergy in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries. 14 It should be noted that much 10  Therefore, in this pre-1296 context, it is possible to understand a multiplicity of reasons for Scottish devotion to Canterbury and Becket, of 'divergent energies' at once private and public, local and national, spiritual and political, often seemingly contradictory but not mutually exclusive in the medieval world. 18 A genuine sense of piety, hope, penance or gratitude may have occasioned both ordinary and elite Scots' pilgrimages and endowments to Becket, especially as St Thomas's reputation for medical cures grew. The record of at least 13 Scots blessed by miracles at Becket's tomb in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries (including Robert, a servant of David, earl of Huntingdon (d. 1219), brother of William I), and the discovery of the aforementioned ampullae of Becket oil in excavations at Perth attest to the shrine's popularity with Scots despite the greater convenience of Arbroath. 19 In the thirteenth century, Scottish interest in Canterbury would have been spurred on, too, by the fame, visual power and guaranteed rewards of indulgences offered at the new shrine in which Archbishop Stephen Langton, attended by the young Henry III (brother-in-law of 15  In much the same way, kinship and personal piety (perhaps in the face of illness or fears of infertility) also saw Alexander II make pilgrimage to Canterbury in 1223: his first queen, Joanna, daughter of John I of England, was buried there in 1237, and his widowed French second wife was a pilgrim to Thomas in 1276. 23 The death of his English queen (1275) or his mother may also have been the reason behind Alexander III's gift of 100 shillings per annum about August 1279 to pay for 13 paupers' meals to be distributed at Canterbury Christ Church every Tuesday (Becket's special day): this was a very public act of charity arranged for the king with Canterbury by the abbot and convent of Arbroath. 24 At the same time, however, all these acts of piety may have been motivated by far more complex factors than the simple search for a cure from disease or infirmity (with Becket's specialty emerging as leprosy), or for an indulgence, a blessing, a remission or the fulfilment of a vow of thanks which presumably brought many Scots south to Kent in this century. 25 One thing the Scottish kings and the Bruces had in common was lordship of Midlands and southeastern English lands. After the death in 1237 of John, earl of Chester and Huntingdon (nephew of William I and thus brother-in-law of Robert Bruce (IV)), the Bruces came into Essex holdings at Hatfield Regis, Writtle and Great Baddow, north of Kent. 26 The Douglas family also held Essex lands at Stebbing and Woodham Ferrers at this time. Alexander Balliol of Cavers in Roxburghshire, Alexander III's Chancellor, was also lord of the barony of Chilham in Kent itself, along the Old Pilgrims' Way from Winchester and less than 10 miles from Canterbury. 27 20 Foreville, Le Jubilee, 7-11, 89-91; P. Binski Thus these Scottish landholders especially, but no less perhaps the many other Scottish nobles with northern English lands, would have found it natural as well as politic to establish ties of lordship and devotion with Canterbury in a world in which the archbishops of that great see so often played a vital role: for lords with more English lands than Scottish lands, like the Balliols of Barnard Castle (and of Galloway after 1233), this would have been even more the case. 28 For the kings of Scots, though, a political dimension to Canterbury or St Thomas observances can be taken further. Indeed, as Keith Stringer has noted, for William I and his bishops e and thus also for Alexanders II and III and their prelates e Becket could indeed serve as an increasingly potent icon of resistance to Plantagenet authority (although one they did not shirk from fighting against when required, for example sending Scottish lords in 1264-5 to aid Henry III against Simon de Montfort who had invoked Becket in his rebellion against the crown). In addition, the papacy was open to strategic appeals to Becket's reputation and sacrifice in defending the rights of Mother Church and thus in the Scottish church's long-running jurisdictional fight against Canterbury and York as well as in an allied campaign for the rite of full coronation with unction for Scotland's kings. Despite a bull of recognition of Scotland's church as a 'special daughter' of Rome in 1192, just three years after Richard I's Canterbury 'quitclaim' of overlordship, the papacy continued to be distracted by English claims to ecclesiastical superiority. 29 St Thomas could be an invaluable association on many levels and the lessons and power of his life, martyrdom and miracles were adapted for differing audiences and politico-religious contexts throughout the realms of late medieval Europe: the Scots were thus surely similar to the French in invoking Becket in the course of tensions with England's crown. 30 Yet at the same time, such was the English crown's veneration of Thomas e and with Edward I in the 1270s and 1280s this was especially true e that Scottish devotion and journeys to Becket and his tomb may equally have been deployed as a means of ingratiation with the Plantagenet house, facilitating talks over royal marriages, overlordship and land issues. 31 It must therefore be acknowledged that for Scots, too, 'it would be dangerous to assume that the complicated and ever-changing psychological and spiritual ramifications of St Thomas Becket's own cult can now be properly understood'. 32 It follows, then, that the potential ambivalence or versatility of what this saint, his shrine and their constructed image could stand for in the eyes of a non-English audience might have continued, or intensified, in its attractiveness to Scots even after a bitter national war broke out against England following the deaths of Alexander III and his granddaughter, Margaret of Norway (1286-90), and the failed kingship of John Balliol (1292-96).
Admittedly, Becket's cult had a lot to live down in Scotland after 1296. Edward I, a regular pilgrim and generous patron to Canterbury throughout his reign, made significant public play of prayers and oblations to St Thomas alongside other English 'national' and local saints in the  Given the events of 1296-1304, Bruce and many other lords who would soon choose to be purely 'Scots' e as well as their common tenants e might easily have come to perceive Becket as an enemy icon and so made a clean break with Canterbury and its associated outposts, abandoning Thomas's cult in favour of dedication only to talismanic Scottish national and local saints and shrines, such as those of St Andrew, St Columba, St Ninian of Whithorn, or St Fillan of Perthshire. 37 A similar history of English aggression in which Becket was among the icons invoked had certainly diluted Welsh association with the saint. 38 Devotion by Scots to Becket might thus easily have become the refuge of exiled and disinherited lords in English pay, especially after Bruce's rebellion in 1306; the preserve of men such as John Macdougall of Argyll, who died while on pilgrimage to Canterbury in 1317, or the Strathbogies of Atholl, whose final heir's will was recorded at Canterbury c.1373. 39 Conversely, it might be contended that Robert Bruce (VII)'s symbolic Carlisle submission in 1297 was actually his own choice, a reflection of a strong personal and dynastic bond to St Thomas and his shrine and something to which many other Scots could still relate. Canterbury Cathedral archive contains a register copy of a letter from a 'Robert Bruce earl of Carrick' to Henry of Eastry, prior of Trinity Church, Canterbury, from 1285 to 1331 and custodian of Becket's tomb. 40 It is possible that this had been sent on behalf of an ailing Robert Bruce (VI), father of the future Scottish king, who was indeed earl of Carrick until his resignation of that title in 1293 but sometimes styled thus in English administrative documents, particularly after he retired to his Essex estates, between c.1298 and his death about the time of Scottish re-capitulation to Edward I in 1304 (he was also lord of Annandale, 1295-1304). 41 However, the letter may alternatively represent the wishes of Robert Bruce (VII), the king-to-be, who was also styled as earl of Carrick by English documents within this period and did legally hold this title 1293-1306. 42 Indeed, the content of the letter to Prior Henry points more temptingly to the younger Bruce and could be aligned with Bruce's oath at Carlisle in 1297, calling as it does for the prior and convent to take custody of two gold rings enclosed with the letter and to place one on the altar of St Thomas and the other on a pillar nearby. This was, perhaps, an offering given on behalf of 'our estate', as it is stated, at the time of Bruce (VII)'s second marriage, to Elizabeth de Burgh, daughter of the earl of Ulster, shortly after his return to Edward I's peace in early 1302. 43 The letter is certainly further proof of a close Bruce family relationship with Canterbury and St Thomas, one which would have struck a chord with Edward I but building on the links first established by the Bruces between 1178 and the jubilee year of 1220: Prior Henry is addressed with familiarity and affection as 'his dear friend' and is urged to find a prominent place for the rings amongst the sender's other 'offerings' (plural), 'if God Please'. Robert (VII)'s sister, Mary, and daughter, Marjorie, may have acted upon this family link c.1306-15 by visiting Canterbury when they were in custody at Rochester which was itself the site of a shrine to a Scottish pilgrim slain en route to Canterbury in 1201, William, a baker of Perth, beatified in 1256. 44 If the Bruce letter to Henry of Eastry was sent by the future king of Scots this was arguably the second of several Becket associations for Robert (VII) in the years before his seizure of the Scottish throne. This was a path which would be shaped by severe physical and psychological tests in which the would-be king must have called upon and rationalised from very deep reserves, both of expediency and faith. On 10 February 1306, of course, Bruce's campaign was precipitated violently into action through his murder of John Comyn of Badenoch. That the Franciscan friary at Dumfries where this crime was committed also lay close to a chapel to 40 45 But it may have been Bruce's at once opportunistic yet heartfelt interpretation of another significant event which determined that as king he would display a firm level of personal as well as politic commitment to St Thomas alongside other royal and regional saints: that is, on 7 July 1307, the translation feast of Becket, when Edward I died at Burgh-on-Sands, a few miles short of re-invading Scotland. 46 Over and above this 'sign' for the Scots, Robert I e now physically cut off from Canterbury e had many other strong reasons after 1306 to develop an important relationship with Scotland's Becket centre, Arbroath Abbey. The resources of this, one of the wealthiest monastic houses of the realm and one recovered from English occupation relatively early, c.1308-09, made it a desirable base for the Bruce regime's chancery. In Abbot Bernard of Arbroath as chancellor, Bruce employed an extremely skilful bureaucrat and propagandist, one of a crowded bench of determined Scottish churchmen who, if Robert was not already aware of the full canon of Scottish royal and ecclesiastical icons and sites, would have impressed upon their king the value of association with just such a spiritual regiment. 47 Tentative extrapolation from Robert I's extant acts permits the inference that he was aware of and probably observed each year in some form not only the translation (7 July) and martyrdom (29 December) feast days of St Thomas, but also the regressio de exilio feast of 2 December, a red-letter day shared uniquely, as Keith Stringer has shown, by Canterbury and Arbroath (the 'return from exile', apt given Bruce's flight to the west in the winter of 1306-7). 48 Admittedly, Robert I's presence cannot be unquestionably confirmed at Arbroath Abbey about the time of the martyrdom feast for any year other than 1315, although in October that year Robert did pay for candles to be kept lit at the tomb of the abbey's founder, William I. 49 Barrow (Edinburgh, 1971) In acting thus his model was surely Edward I, a king well able to fulfil the royal need to associate with, and therefore link in the minds of his subjects and enemies, an eclectic host of both national and regional saints and shrines, turning personal public observance in the service of his court, policies and wars. 51 Therefore, in theory, for Bruce and his supporters, the large almonry chapel of Arbroath Abbey e a building detached from the convent there and suggesting a continued strength in pilgrim numbers to the Angus house e and which was dedicated to St Michael, might be associated with the dedication to that archangel of the chapel at the strategically vital royal castle of Stirling. Similarly, the hospital at Arbroath was dedicated to St John the Baptist, whose town of Perth (St Johnston) Bruce led his troops to liberate in 1313 and whose feast day after 1314 became the anniversary of the battle of Bannockburn (24 June) at Stirling, another date which Bruce and his subjects are likely to have observed annually. 52 These  feast of the Virgin (2 July), the feasts (29-30 June) and octave of Apostles Peter and Paul, the death date of Alexander II (8 July), Robert I's own birthday (11 July) and the inauguration of Alexander III (13 July). 62 The king and his court may have travelled from St Andrews to Arbroath c.5-7 July in the crisis year of 1318 thus perhaps explaining why the contemporary verse which records the king's aforementioned Bannockburn speech (preserved in a fifteenth-century chronicle manuscript) invokes Andrew and Thomas in the same breath. A reliquary of St Andrew might also have been brought to the 1314 battleground, as well as a relic of St Fillan (feast 9 January), a key Perthshire cult which had been invoked by Bruce as he escaped into exile in 1306. Significantly, all these feasts may have been very publicly marked in 1318, a year in which the English crown and prelates had made great play of the papacy's re-excommunication of Bruce and the threat of interdict upon Scotland. 63 These were spiritual associations which Bishops Wishart of Glasgow and Lamberton of St Andrews and Abbot Bernard could all too easily impress upon a king who had so badly needed their approval and guidance in 1306 and from whom they would have extracted an oath to the church. 64 Less obvious but by no means less persuasive spiritual associations may also have been used to win the hearts and minds of Bruce's opponents in Fife and Galloway. At Dunfermline Abbey, the body shrine of St Margaret of c.1250 (feast day 16 November, translation feast 19 June) and the links there of her late eleventh-century foundation of Benedictine monks from Canterbury were a further boost to Robert's association with his MacMalcolm predecessors' royal mausoleum at this Fife monastic site. 65 Similarly, the cathedral body shrine of St Ninian at Whithorn in Galloway (feast day 26 August, translation feast 31 August), in a church dedicated to the French realm's favourite saint, Martin (feast day 11 November, translation feast 4 July), may have provided another link to Becket's shrine city: the earliest British Isles churches dedicated to St Martin were held to have been in Canterbury and Whithorn. 66 As with the several feasts of St Thomas, the key liturgical days of these holy figures may have been observed by Robert I either when the itinerary of his campaigns and diplomacy permitted or around the daily routine of his household and chancery.
In this context, St Thomas formed an important standard or weapon with which Robert and his regime could combat and/or persuade his opponents and potential allies. It can easily be imagined that the Scottish clergy e in the same vein as the Bannockburn address e invoked this network of saints in the preaching to their flock which English captains in Scotland so feared. 67 Arguably, this was a natural war-time reflection of established saintly inter-connections which had informed worshipers and pilgrims in Scotland for centuries past of valuable journeys and devotions which they might make throughout Scotland and beyond their realm to shrines associated with their own local cults. As Diana Webb has shown, a pilgrim to one shrine had often already gone to another, usually local, religious site and perhaps failed to secure a cure there, and/or had a vision urging them to journey on to another, more potent, saint's relic or tomb, or even pre-planned a journey to several connected shrines, depending upon the severity of their infirmity, guilt or piety: in such practice Becket was often to be found as a partner to other saints and their shrines. 68 Robert I's regime clearly continued to show an interest in Thomas's cult and its political as well as spiritual value, particularly in dealings with the papacy: the 'Irish Remonstrance' of 1317, issued by Irish supporters of the Bruce invasion of 1315-18, invoked Becket's cause against the English crown as if 'for justice and the defence of the church'. In the same way the Scots may logically have ensured that the bearers of the Scottish nobles' letter to John XXII sealed in April 1320 e now known as the 'Declaration of Arbroath' e prefaced its delivery by invoking the Canterbury martyr. 69 In addition, Bruce's regime must have taken comfort from the failure c.1324 of Edward II's campaign to secure papal permission to include anointment with the 'holy oil of Becket' e held to have been given to the archbishop by the Virgin to be later rediscovered thus allowing its royal user to recover lost lands to the English crown. This was a prophecy of which Robert I must have been aware: the Scots, of course, secured their own rite of unction for coronation from the papacy in 1329.  However, during prolonged and destructive warfare and diplomatic tensions, although religious observance might become more intense, local worship must survive and grow first at a time when travel was exceptionally dangerous and resources scarce. There is some evidence, indeed, that Robert I's personal and strategic devotion to St Thomas effectively persuaded his subjects to favour the cult closer to home. In 1317, the Bruce king confirmed a grant by the Gaelic earl of Lennox, transferring an annual render of four oxen from Cambuskenneth's Augustinian priory of St Mary to Arbroath Abbey. 71  However, there is no extant proof that, once Anglo-Scottish peace was concluded in 1328, significant Scots began to seek safe-conducts from Edward III to make pilgrimage to Canterbury and Becket's tomb itself, although Robert's leading general, Sir James Douglas, charged with taking his king's heart to the Holy Land after death in 1329-30, may have passed through England and thus Canterbury en route to the continent. 74 For the Scots, Arbroath and Becket associations had been a clear asset in war against England, not a 'liability', but despite the peace treaty of 1328, Anglo-Scottish relations may have remained too tense, Bruce's recent invocations of St Thomas too adversarial and Canterbury just too far for an immediate resumption of Scottish pilgrimage traffic to the chief site of this cult. An uneasy truce, Bruce's excommunication and a (failed) regicide plot had denied any Scots the chance to participate in the jubilee feast at Canterbury in 1320 and war would quickly resume in 1332: there are no extant safeconducts for Scottish pilgrims to Canterbury for the 25 years after Robert's death. 75 In all that time the English crown arguably gave the Scots further cause to sever devotional links with Canterbury and Becket. Edward III, like his grandfather, would be an annual visitor  But David's capture in battle in October 1346 and the 11 years he would spend in captivity in and around London would cause a marked shift in the Scottish crown's attitude to and promotion of St Thomas and Canterbury. A more anglophile approach to that city and its chief cult may already have been introduced to David through the personal and public faith of his English wife, Joan of the Tower, Edward III's sister. 79 Yet it was surely David's observation at first hand of the importance of the cult to Edward III and his subjects, as well as to England's other wartime prisoners, which was most influential. David may have been aware of Edward's annual feast visits to Canterbury as well as to other shrines but also of the English king's gift of a golden ship to Becket's altar while at Canterbury in 1343 and a further £40 statue of gold in 1353. The Scottish king would have had even more chance of hearing of the pilgrimages on parole of Edward's various French prisoners, including those given as collateral for Jean II after his capture at Poitiers in 1356: Jean himself, another exile, made several pilgrimages to Canterbury and had his heart interred there in 1364. 80 However, David's motives for developing his own and subsequently his realm's association with Becket and Canterbury, and of signalling this activity to Edward III, surely went beyond an immediate diplomatic and personal need for a treaty of release. David did arrange through the English chancellor to secure Edward's permission to make a pilgrimage to Canterbury from London on horseback between 10 and 12 September 1357, the week before his final liberation. David explained the reasons for wishing to make such a pilgrimage as likely to be greatly pleasing to himself and his guardian (Sir William Trussell). Yet this probably spoke more to the recurrent illness which David faced because of his battle wounds rather than any perceived need to sweeten the English king and community to release terms (which had already been decided). David is recorded as giving an oblation of 18d, presumably to Becket's altar, as well as 16d in alms on this trip which cost his keeper £71 13s 4d in total: David was also attended about that time by Edward III's physician, a Jordan of Canterbury. 81 This was the first in a number of personal acts of patronage by David associated with Canterbury which suggest that he was acting, at this juncture, out of sincere piety, not merely convention or political expediency: numerous factors including his captivity, his domestic political predicament, his apparent infertility, recurrent illness and the backdrop of plague epidemics after 1348-9, may have precipitated such a spiritual shift. In its grip, David seems to have revived Alexander III's commitment of the Scottish crown of 1279 to provide alms for the poor at Becket's shrine: in 1359 Scotland's Exchequer Rolls record the payment of some £7 10s of 'Canterbury alms' from the accounts of the sheriff of Forfarshire, indicating the levy of this sum from Arbroath's hinterland. 82 David may have intended to pay these alms or make public oblations in the course of further personal visits to Canterbury using gold noble coins, a regular royal use of such high-status specie at this time. The Scottish nobles were modelled on Edward III's issue of 1351 which David's Florentine minters in Edinburgh produced after c.1357 in very small numbers and to the value of 6s 8d, roughly equivalent to Edward I's standard 7s donation coins. 83 But much more significantly, in 1358, the king may have had a hand in a written request from the abbot of Arbroath to Canterbury for an additional relic of St Thomas for the Scottish house. 84 At the same time, David certainly patronised one Richard Ellisworth, an English clergymen paid as a royal chaplain in 1359: the king petitioned the papacy on 27 June 1358 to award Ellisworth a benefice within the diocese of Canterbury. 85 Whether un-stated 'business', presumably diplomatic talks at London, which might have allowed him to journey on over three to six days to Canterbury and back (as he had done in 1357) or at least to pay for a proxy pilgrim or oblation to Becket. David is known to have made at least four journeys to London in person with retinue e in late 1358, late 1363, and about May of each of 1365 and 1369. 87 This larger general list of travel requests also includes a permit granted on 28 February 1370 for David and a retinue of 40 which would have allowed the king to attend the jubilee translation feast at Canterbury that year: the gap in David's extant acts (31 May to 15 July), the issue of his privy seal letters delaying the next ransom instalment (dated at London on 4 June 1370) and his large expense on talks with England that year (some £966) suggests that he may indeed have gone to Canterbury in person, a visit not previously noticed by historians, at a time when he already knew his health to be failing (and he also badly needed clerical support to secure an annulment of his marriage to Margaret). 88 Although it cannot be verified if David used all these safe-conducts, if it was his aim to lead by example after his release and to encourage his subjects to resume pilgrimage to Canterbury he was successful. Between 1357 and 1406 the English crown issued safe-conducts to some 30 named individual Scots seeking explicit permission to visit St Thomas's shrine at Canterbury: a number of these Scots made repeated requests and, perhaps, visits with retinues ranging in size from four to 20 or even 30 men on average. 89 But this sample increases drastically (by perhaps as much as a factor of 10) when it includes the names, too numerous to list fully, of those Scots issued permits to enter England on a general pilgrimage to a number of unidentified English shrines or granted passage through England on pilgrimage to shrines or other business in 'parts overseas', presumably very often travelling via the Dover Road and thus Canterbury. To these hundreds of Scots (if their retinues are included), many more unknown Scots might be added e those of a lower class travelling without permits and all those taking ship directly to the Sussex, Kent or East-Anglian ports. 90 Within the larger named samples, however, a variety of the many motivations of the typical pilgrim can be glimpsed. There were those Scots travelling in search of a cure, in anticipation of their own death or, perhaps, as part of the obsequies of a family member, activities which must have multiplied in what was an age of recurrent plague (1348-50, 1361-2, 1380). For example, Patrick Dunbar, earl of March received at least six safe-conducts, with retinues ranging from eight to 20 men, from 1358 until his death aged about 85 in 1368: a permit of early 1362 may have been granted to allow the earl to mark the death of his son and heir, John, in captivity in England, possibly of the plague. 91 92 There were also those Scottish pilgrims to Canterbury whose purpose may have been to ease their own period of captivity or to absolve transgressions against Edward III committed during truce: for example, Sir Hugh Eglintoun, Sir John Towers and Sir Archibald Douglas, granted general safe-conducts in 1357, 1358 and 1359 and who had been captured both at Poitiers and then during a border raid in 1358; or Robert of Caithness, valet of William earl of Sutherland, a hostage prisoner for David in 1362. 93 Then there were those acting out of contrition or fulfilling a penance perhaps imposed by the Scottish crown: for example, Sir John Kennedy of Dunure in Ayrshire, guilty of slaying a priest said to have slandered him to King David, who was permitted on 10 October 1363 to travel to St Thomas's tomb at Canterbury and then on to France; or Alexander Stewart, fourth son of Robert II (1371-90), imprisoned by David II for failure to impose order on his Badenoch tenants in northern Scotland and granted permission on 26 August 1374 to make pilgrimage in England with, remarkably, Sir Walter Leslie, his 'feud enemy' for the earldom of Ross. 94 Finally, there were many Scots who might be said to have planned a pilgrimage out of pure devotion, no other stated or detectable reason surviving to explain their decision. A number of these Scots sought safe-conducts as individuals with retinue and seemed to seek passage repeatedly throughout their own lifetime hinting at a commitment to Becket's shrine as a firm plank of their personal faith. For example, Thomas and Gilbert Macolagh (MacCulloch), minor Galloway nobles in English allegiance before 1350, sought permits to Thomas's shrine in 1358 and 1360; Sir Thomas Somerville applied to go to his namesake's shrine at Canterbury in 1362, 1363, 1364 and 1369; and Eleanor Douglas, the many-times widowed Countess of Carrick, sought to enter England to visit 'the shrines of the saints' in 1358 and specifically Becket's tomb in 1373 and 1375. 95 But quite strikingly there were also large numbers of Scots who either applied for or were granted permission to travel into England and often on to Canterbury seemingly as a group. It may be that such listed names sought to take safety in numbers on their journey but even if they nonetheless travelled alone, their simultaneous permit and shared destination suggests that they may have been motivated either by shared vows borne of a common role back in Scotland in a religious endowment, the birth or death of a notable individual or the collective goal of participation in a (very often, once-in-a-lifetime) long-distance adventure beyond Canterbury and England's shores. Such a group can be found receiving permission to travel through England on their way to St John the Baptist's tomb at Amiens on 16 October 1365, presumably via the Dover road and Canterbury, and featured 19 named Scots with over 90 followers. 96  However, the fact that many of these individuals would be named on a number of such permits from Edward III between 1358 and 1371 suggests that some of the pilgrimage safe-conduct evidence from this period e especially, it should be noted, the roughly 90% of passes issued where Canterbury was not the explicit destination e actually represents hopeful, or even in some cases coercive, crown-sponsored pilgrimage to England, engineered by David II and his close supporters. To take one obvious example, about 5-6 December 1363, some 39 named Scots with over 200 followers, in four groups of varying size and some as individuals, were issued with permits to cross the border either on 'pilgrimage in England' or on unstated business. These documents were, though, issued exactly at a time when David II was actually in England with Edward III drawing up fresh plans for a peace treaty which included the prospect of an English prince being admitted to David's royal succession ahead of his heirs presumptive, the Stewarts, as well as the restoration of the Scottish lands of some of the exiled lords disinherited by Robert I. 97 In this context, these collective travel permits may rather have been sought by David and his councillors and issued in an attempt to expose as many influential Scots as possible to a positive experience in England at Edward III's court and/or Canterbury and thus to persuade them to further accept David's diplomatic plans of closer relations with their former enemy: to socialise Scots, in a sense, within the English communitas. 98 There thus remained a distinct political dimension to the Bruce dynasty's desire to encourage their subjects in devotion to the cult of St Thomas: where Robert I's interest in association with Becket c.1306-29 had been antagonistic in its stance towards England, David II now pushed a pro-English, anti-Stewart agenda. 99 Allied to this, David actively sought in person a general safe-conduct for Scottish students to study at Oxford or Cambridge Universities after 1357 (a permit significantly also renewed on 5 December 1363 them clerks for David's government: these men represent another group who could also have gone to Canterbury unnoticed. 100 Similarly, David secured a general safe conduct for Scottish merchants to enter England, which they did in scores after 1357, members of a highly influential estate now admitted to Scottish parliaments who could also undertake spiritual activity: a John Goldsmith, bailie of Edinburgh, certainly secured passage to St Thomas's shrine at Canterbury in July 1358; Edinburgh super-merchant, Roger Hogg, also secured permission for pilgrimage to St James at Compostella through England with his wife in 1362. 101 At the same time, the second Bruce king was a celebrated and determined patron of eastern Scottish Lowland men of chivalry interested in participation in crusades to Prussia and the Holy Land: men such as the Leslies, Lindsays, Hepburns, Barclays, Abernethys, Edmonstones and Erskines who featured regularly on passes on pilgrimage or through England to parts 'overseas' and, again, may have reached Dover via Canterbury. 102 The exact mechanism by which Scots obtained travel permits from the English crown is unclear: we do not know whether individuals had to approach the Scottish crown first, securing the permission of the king and chamberlain who would then approach the southern kingdom's officials, or whether Scots could make independent requests direct to England. 103 But if David and his ministers were, in any case, soliciting pilgrimage passes to Canterbury and elsewhere for some Scottish subjects and pressurising them to go it is highly likely that many such permits were never used. This would have especially been the case where David targeted greater nobles whom he regarded either as disaffected or as potentially valuable political allies but in need of further Anglophile persuasion or coercion. Thus the many safe-conducts to Canterbury and elsewhere issued and often repeated to William, earl of Douglas, and Patrick Dunbar, earl of March, might easily include passports which were never taken up. 104 Similarly, at moments of political crisis in Scotland David may have sought to dilute some of the factional opposition to his diplomatic and territorial agenda by seeking to send men like Douglas and March e who joined Robert the Steward of Scotland and his sons in coercing David in Spring 1359 and in openly rebelling against the monarch in Spring 1363 e out of the kingdom ostensibly on pilgrimage. For example, in November 1362, in the wake of David's siege of Kildrummy castle in Aberdeenshire and the forfeiture of its owner, Thomas, earl of Mar, a pass to Canterbury was issued to the earl of Douglas (Mar's brother-in-law), the earl of March, the bishop of St Andrews and Mar himself. The latter was a maverick who might have been drawn to adhere to David's plans for a military alliance with England if his becoming a liege man of Edward III while in ostensible exile from Scotland after 1362 could be combined with regular pilgrimage to Canterbury. 105 The departure of these magnates from Scotland e as with all other pilgrims and crusaders e would have seen their lands and goods placed under the protection of the crown and they could have had no input to daily patronage, council or parliament at sensitive moments. That David monitored pilgrimage activity with this in mind is illustrated by Edward III's 'revocation' on 20 April 1363, cancelling Patrick earl of March's safe-conduct to St Thomas's tomb at Canterbury at the height of the aforementioned earls' rebellion (including March) against the Scottish king: David must have informed the English officials who would not harbour rebels against the Scottish monarch. 106 By the same token, of course, requesting passage to Canterbury might also be a ploy used by these same magnates themselves to safe-guard an escape route away from David. However, such a crown policy could only be effective where there was genuine interest in such a longdistance pilgrimage and Thomas's cult. The further pilgrimage passes to Canterbury issued to other Douglases and March's successors c.1371-1400 suggest that these houses of Anglo-Norman stock were the most consistently open to the possibility of closer political, social, economic and cultural relations with England, despite their dominance of border warfare. 107 By contrast, those nobles who clashed most regularly with David's regime and plans in the 1360s and whose political and spiritual outlook might be said to be predominantly Gaelicised e Robert Steward as earl of Strathearn and Atholl, or William, earl of Ross e never received any sort of pass to England.
A significant proportion, therefore, of all the recorded Scots given permission to visit Canterbury by Edward III, or to enter and/or pass through England for general pilgrimage or continental devotions, holy warfare and peacetime business, was not motivated by purely spiritual interest in St Thomas's relics and shrine. This is a pattern of motivation similar to that of pre-1296 Scots but the Becket devotions of the Scottish elite at Canterbury in the later fourteenth century were, nonetheless, arguably often more complex in their motivation than, say, their counterparts in France, Flanders and other European realms and were affected more directly by personal and political concerns in their home realm. This was a development determined partly by the relative ease of access of Scots to their southern neighbour during truces, but far more by the unique diplomatic and domestic circumstances of David II's reign after his capture in 1346.
However, even though David related to St Thomas in a different way than had his father, his reign nonetheless underlines the necessity of the support of an active king of Scots to encourage Scottish subjects' participation in such contact with England if it was to occur and flourish. In that sense David's crucial personal interest in Becket and Canterbury, and his procurement of general passes for Scottish nobles, merchants and students, too, was highly influential. Still, the large numbers of extant passports to Canterbury or England of c.1357 to 1371 may be proof that David's efforts in reality only gave further impetus to a universally popular devotional path which would have revived and grown in some measure anyway and of which the fame and pulling power to Scots had survived over 60 years of Anglo-Scottish war, sustained by plague, economic hardship and the potentia of the martyr. The abbot of Arbroath's aforementioned letter to Canterbury in 1358 requesting a relic of St Thomas perhaps sought to supply an existing demand rather than create or revive one: the contemporary vernacular source for the late fourteenth century used in the verse chronicle of Andrew Wyntoun, prior of St Serf's at Lochleven in Fife (c.1408-24), certainly asserted that: 'Off him [St Thomas] the fest is haldin ay' in Scotland. 108 This may explain why, contrary to the general assumption of historians, the numbers of Scottish pilgrims to Canterbury and St Thomas did not in fact collapse abruptly after David's death in February 1371 and the coronation of his political antagonist, Robert Steward/Robert II (1371-90), as the head of a Stewart dynasty which was established in western, central and northern e largely Gaelic e Scotland. True, the number of significant Scots seeking passage explicitly to Canterbury and Becket's shrine did dwindle over the period 1371-c.1404 and this may reflect a loss of crown and noble interest: only a dozen or so Scots received such passes. 109 A number of factors must have reduced Scottish activity in England and at Canterbury especially. After Edward III's death in 1377 Anglo-Scottish border conflict did resume, punctuated by a joint Franco-Scottish expedition in 1385, Richard II's burning of south-east Scotland in the same year, the Scottish victory in battle at Otterburn in 1388, Henry IV's invasion to Edinburgh in 1400 and Scottish defeat at Humbleton in 1402. 110 The Peasants' Revolt in 1381 and the Lancastrian coup of 1399 may also have discouraged Scots from visiting southern England. 111 In addition, both Richard II and Henry IV took fresh interest in the old legend of Becket's holy oil as adding to England's royal rite of unction and a claim to fulfil the prophecy of re-conquering lost lands. 112 More importantly, though, English and Scottish support of rival popes during the Great Schism of 1378-1418 may have hindered Scots' travel south. 113 Finally, the burial of Edward the Black Prince, a devotee of the Trinity cult, in Canterbury in October 1376 close to the high altar and Becket's shrine, may also have deterred noble Scottish visitors to what was thus even more so a Plantagenet spiritual home: notably, the Douglas family sent several members to St Thomas at Canterbury after 1371, but these explicitly-stated travel requests did not re-occur after June 1375. 114 However, the number of Scots issued safe-conducts to enter or pass through England for other purposes e English counties, continental or Holy Land pilgrimage, tournaments, papal, diplomatic or mercantile business e remained remarkably buoyant c.1371-c.1400 and took advantage of the numerous periods of truce. 115 Many of these individuals could have included Canterbury in their itinerary. For example, the 12 Scottish knights e members of David's court and officer class e who secured passage through England for pilgrimage in Europe on 17 March 1371 might easily have visited Becket's shrine as part of the obsequies of David himself; or the grouping of Sir Alexander Lindsay, Sir Patrick Hepburn, Sir John Abernethy, Sir John Edmonstone and John Towers en route to the Holy Land after December 1381. 116 If one trend does suggest itself, though, amongst these passes, it is that very few Scottish churchmen were included in their number after 1371 and most of the laymen named were knights prominent in the Anglo-Scottish border warfare of the day. Indeed, their pilgrimage activity may have become integrated with, subsidiary to, or even merely an excuse for, military and chivalric pursuits.
For example, on 16 January 1383, Sir James Lindsay of Crawford was permitted to make pilgrimage to Becket's shrine at Canterbury but with a retinue of a hundred men, hinting strongly that his real purpose may have been attendance at a tournament: in May 1390 Lindsay and several other Scottish lords, would be given permission to enter England to buy armour. Similarly, on 16 March 1390, George, earl of March, secured permission to travel south to London for a single-combat against the earl of Nottingham: but on 28 October 1390, March was also granted a pass to Canterbury as was his brother, John, earl of Moray, on 20 December, documents which were presumably, though, not used as they seemed to be repeated on 13 June 1391. By 1406, Alexander Stewart, earl of Mar, was in receipt of passports which allowed him to travel either armed or unarmed. 117 It was military activity or simply unstated 'business' which thus became the predominant purpose of safe-conduct requests in the later fourteenth century: no extant passes explicitly to Canterbury were granted to Scots c.1391-c.1400.
Of course, it can never be known whether this apparent gradual decline of Scottish interest in Becket was reflected in the activity of lower-class Scottish pilgrims: it may be that they concentrated their devotions to St Thomas at Arbroath Abbey. The latter was a site, however, given only slight attention by Kings Robert II and Robert III and which suffered another major fire in 1380: the rebuilding of Arbroath's almonry chapel and further fabric expansion does, though, suggests sustained popular pilgrimage. 118 Further investigation is required to illustrate whether or not Scottish interest in Becket and Canterbury revived after 1400, perhaps during the similar captivity in England of James I from 1406 and the relative peace of his adult reign (1424-37), or in similar periods of Anglo-Scottish calm up to the realms' respective Reformations of 1538 and 1560; or, as seems most likely, whether further instances of Anglo-Scottish tension did indeed combine to drastically reduce Scottish interest in the distant southern shrine, for example the open conflict or distrust which coincided with the three remaining Becket translation jubilees of 1420, 1470 and 1520.
A cursory survey of the (admittedly patchy) Scottish rolls of the English crown for extant safe-conducts issued to Scots for travel explicitly to Becket's tomb and Canterbury reveals 115  only some 30 to 40 named individual Scots (and their retinues) seeking passage between c.1404 and c.1538. 119 This would seem to suggest that by no means did Scottish interest in the chief English pilgrimage site and saint ever again approach the kind of level, or rest upon the kind of relations, to which the two Bruce kings had aspired in the fourteenth century. This is a trend of decline which singular instances of Scottish devotion to Becket in the fifteenth century e such as the miracle cure granted at Canterbury to a pilgrim from Aberdeen in 1445 e cannot overturn. 120 Nonetheless, to conclude, it is clear that far from becoming an embarrassing handicap in the struggle against England after 1296, St Thomas and his devotional centres of Arbroath and Canterbury had actually increased in their religious resonance and utility for many Scots, not least the Bruce kings. Robert I had clearly felt a strong familial and, possibly, a personal spiritual connection with St Thomas before 1307, one he turned increasingly to a strategic tack against English diplomacy and propaganda. The unexpected dynastic and diplomatic circumstances of David II's reign, however, saw Scottish crown sponsorship of devotion to Becket and to Canterbury and Arbroath continue to be driven by strategic and political motives but still fuelled by a genuine personal belief in the positive inter-cessionary powers of the saint e a faith shared by the king and a significant, active proportion of his subjects in pursuit of closer relations with England: this is a pattern still under-emphasised by most modern scholars of the later fourteenth century. After 1357, for David, his councillors and numerous nobles, clerics, merchants and lesser Scots, there was clearly a reduced need for a confrontational anti-English advocacy of Becket's cult and a more general call for the saint's aid of livelihoods, general cures and shelter from epidemic. Had the Bruce dynasty survived its second generation, then, Scottish devotion and pilgrimage to St Thomas, as well as associated Anglo-Scottish trade, education, chivalric and cultural exchange, and, perhaps, resumed intermarriage and land-holding, might have formed a central component of the spirituality and identity of the Scottish court and wider community. These links might have emerged as the basis of far more pacific Anglo-Scottish contact than that which would be favoured by Stewart kings of Scots after 1371.