Anglici caudati: abuse of the English in Fourteenth-Century Scottish Chronicles, Literature and Records

Abstract

First paragraph: The research for this paper began with a simple premise: that it should be a relatively straight-forward task to assemble a survey of Scottish writers’ increasingly abusive depictions of the English in fourteenth-century government records, diplomatic papers, propaganda and correspondence, as well as in historical annals and chronicles, verse, literature and song. It might also be assumed, given the generations of war between England and Scotland after 1296 – punctuated by major battles in 1297, 1298, 1314, 1318, 1332, 1333, 1346, 1388 and 1402 - that such Scottish portrayals of their most common enemy would also take on an increasingly heated ethnic tone and adopt a racialist discourse, deploying not merely a conventional canon of English atrocities, sacrilege and villains but graduating to juicy stereotypes, national characteristics and repeated slanders to strong effect. This would build, one might naturally presume, on the infamous Scottish medieval gibe (which seemingly has its origins in fourteenth-century France) that the English had tails. The received Scottish memory of singular incidences like the sacking of Dunbar in 1296, the execution of William Wallace in 1305 or the destruction of the Lothians in the ‘Burnt Candlemas’ of 1356, spring to mind as likely catalysts to such a perceived birth and growth of Scottish racial hatred of the English, passionately expressed in records and compositions, in the ‘long’ fourteenth century.