APRIL 6 is better known for most of us as the start of the new tax year. Long before HMRC commandeered it, however, this was the day when, in a small seaside town, one of the most influential and famous letters in Scottish history was written. This spring marks its 700th anniversary, a moment when many will stop to consider what life was like all those centuries ago, and reflect on the ways in which this unimaginably distant past chimes with our own.

Known today as the Declaration of Arbroath – a title bestowed on it in the middle of last century – this document was a beautifully composed plea, and promise, written in Latin to the Pope. Not much longer than this column, it gives a historical overview of where the Scots came from and who they fought off to claim the land, and offers a paean of praise to their king of 15 years, Robert the Bruce. Its authorship is disputed, but most likely it was the work of Bernard de Linton, Abbot of Arbroath Abbey. Written in the abbey, it was then authenticated, rather than signed, by the wax seals of eight earls and about 40 barons.

Bruce’s excommunication by Pope Clement V for the murder of John Comyn was the spark that lit the fuse. The main part of the letter’s demand was for the new pope, John XXII, to acknowledge him as rightful King of Scotland. His claim had been ferociously disputed within the realm by the Balliol family, and by the English, with whom the Scots had been at war for a generation. The triumph of Bruce’s army at Bannockburn six years earlier had not, alas, settled the issue, and the country lived in fear of further attack.

The politics of the early 14th century were bloody and complex. Scotland was not then the unified nation it was to become. It was a ragged, quarrelsome, in places all but ungovernable land, where competing loyalties meant a ruler was well-advised to watch his back. This was no figure of speech, hence the reason that jerkins were made of quilted leather, the medieval equivalent of a flak jacket.

Allegiances between Scottish nobles and the English crown were close, and the distinction between enemy and ally could change overnight. It was a confusing world, in which treachery and betrayal flourished; one of the remarkable aspects of this letter is its insistence on finding clarity, justice and peace in which to get on with their own affairs. In this desire, those who gathered in Arbroath that spring day were very similar to us.

The letter’s declaratory tone rings down the ages: “As long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours, that we are fighting, but for freedom – for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.” It’s a sentiment engraved on many a war memorial, a tear-jerking pronouncement of the values that truly matter in a country wary and sceptical of privilege and power.

Not surprisingly, it is this most emotional cry on which modern readers have leapt, especially those favouring independence. Its anti-English sentiments made sense during brutal times of war, when it was felt the soul of the country was being trampled by opportunistic thugs. Yet the central theme of the letter is libertas, or freedom. Its target was not just Edward II, and his lust to make Scotland his own, but any Scottish ruler who did not uphold the demands of the people and keep it safe from foreign powers.

As the signatories attested, if even the revered Robert the Bruce “should give up what he has begun, seeking to make us or our kingdom subject to the King of England or the English, we should exert ourselves at once to drive him out as our enemy and a subverter of his own right and ours, and make some other man who was well able to defend us our King”.

As a warning that the people’s wishes carried greater weight than the will of the crown, it could not have been clearer. Yet for hundreds of years this embryonic talisman of national pride languished forgotten. Not until the late 17th century was it rediscovered and printed. Sir Walter Scott, arch-champion of the Union, considered it the sort of thing the “ignorant” would be drawn to. This sour response was by way of riposte to the fascination it began to exert in the 1800s, by which time it was being regarded as a touchstone of identity, helping, according to historian Michael Lynch, to create the myth of “the Scottish national psyche”.

Widely, perhaps optimistically, credited as a model for the American Declaration of Independence, Arbroath’s statement of existential and political integrity is to some extent a historical curio. Its power lies as much in the eye of the beholder as in its intrinsic importance. Yet archaic though it is, it eerily prefigures the mood amongst many of us today. In the wake of the General Election, you can read the letter as a statement of Scottish self-assurance and dignity, in which ordinary people can hold their leaders to account.

We are sorely in need of such inspiration. Following our imminent exit from Europe, against the wishes of the electorate, and with the SNP Government’s determination to hold another independence referendum being blocked, not to say mocked, by the prime minister, the situation to some extent, at least, echoes the parlous conditions faced by earls and barons in 1320.

Despite a real sense of desperation, the Declaration of Arbroath makes no special claims for the country, referring to it as lying “at the uttermost ends of the earth”. Very simply, its nobles ask the Pope to urge the English king to leave in peace “this poor little Scotland, beyond which there is no dwelling place at all, and who desire nothing but our own”.

If this sounds piteous or parochial it is anything but. Thanks to its persuasive charm, the Pope eventually recognised Robert the Bruce as king of Scotland as an independent nation. Read the letter again for yourself and see if it doesn’t pep you up ahead of the new year.

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