The Lion Captive: Scottish Royals as Prisoners of England, c.1070-c.1424

Abstract

This paper surveys the experiences of three of Scotland's late medieval kings as prisoners of their immediate neighbours and chief rivals, the kings of England: namely, William I (1165-1214), David II (1329-71) and James I (1406-37). Such a survey does not merely try to recreate the frugal accommodation and household allowed to these captive kings - in the two later cases over more than a decade of imprisonment. Rather, it also shows that such exposure to the English king and his household, court and government could have a fundamentally formative effect upon detained Scottish monarchs, prompting them not only to attempt a redirection of foreign policy in terms of Scotland's relationship with England but also to introduce significant political, administrative, cultural and material changes to their own royal environment once released. Moreover, it also highlights how these kings could find important common ground with their captors in terms of chivalric, literary and material culture, saints' cults and pilgrimage, and even royal marriages. In sum, these periods of captivity and exchange were surely just as important to Scotland's development as a kingdom as were the recurrent periods of minority and/or regency rule the realm had to endure through the late thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.