IN the summer of 1320, at a session of the estates that later came to be known as the Black Parliament of Scone, an assize of noblemen passed judgment on a group of conspirators charged with seeking to overthrow Robert I (1306–29) in favour of Edward Balliol. Among the culprits were a senior member of the royal household, the aged countess of Strathearn, several other prominent land holders and a handful of knights and esquires. All were deeply dissatisfied with the king's recent efforts to reward the families who had supported him in the difficult years leading up to Ban-nockburn and to designate as traitors any of his subjects who refused to acknowledge his claim to the throne. The conspiracy never really got off the ground but the general consensus among the scholars who have studied the plot is that it represented a clear and present danger to the king and a sobering reminder (if any were needed) that in 1320 the Bruce claim to the kingship was still a source of deep division within political society.

The Black Parliament is noteworthy alone for the spectacle that attended its sitting. It is all the more remarkable because Robert summoned the assembly with the principal aim of staging a dramatic manifestation of one of the most important prerogatives associated with later medieval kingship: the exercise of justice. The king's decision to confront the members of the so-called Soules conspiracy in a lawfully constituted meeting of parliament reflected more than merely the need to quell opposition as quickly and as openly as possible. More significantly, it spoke to a shrewd appreciation on Robert's part of the potential inherent in high status assemblies to protect, promote and enhance prerogatives that he considered the specific preserve of the crown, especially in matters relating to the law. Interpretations of the reign of Robert I have argued that the king ‘ruthlessly’ and ‘blatantly’ manipulated parliamentary procedure in order to project an image of legitimacy both within and beyond the kingdom of the Scots. Robert's defeat of Edward II's English army at Bannockburn may have won him the hearts and minds of many subjects, noble and commoner, but, however impressive the victory, it failed to quell opposition to his rule among the friends and adherents of the Balliol family.

INTRODUCTION: KINGS, MASCULINITY AND SIGILLOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE

IN A TREATISE CELEBRATING the illustrious rulers of ancient Britain the northern English historian Aelred of Rievaulx narrated the tale of an encounter between the Scottish king, Malcolm III (1057–93), and a would-be assassin. Informed of a plot to kill him, Aelred wrote, Malcolm staged a dramatic confrontation with the treacherous knight, where he fearlessly placed his life in the hands of the killer. The king demanded, however, that the knight promise to commit his abominable deed neither by resort to poison (for ‘who does not know that that is womanish?’), nor by stealth at night in the royal bedchamber – for that was the way of ‘adulteresses’ – but rather ‘like a man’, that is, in open combat, with drawn sword. The chronicler had him utter his challenge with the bold words ‘[d]o rather what becomes a soldier; act like a man; fight me while alone with me alone, so that your betrayal, which cannot be free of perfidy, will at least be free of disgrace’. Aelred's story is almost certainly fictitious, but it offers historians valuable insight into twelfth-century understandings of idealised manhood, and a useful basis from which to explore the ways in which the high medieval kings of Scots drew on contemporary British and European mores in their efforts to fashion for themselves widely accepted images of masculine authority.

In the Europe of Aelred's day the figure of the king occupied a position at the apex of several different hierarchies and a central place in a host of imagined communities. He was at once the source of all political authority in his realm, more powerful than even the greatest of his magnates; the fount of all justice in the kingdom, yet generous with his mercy; the divinely appointed protector of his clerical subjects, from the humblest clerk to the most exalted prelate. He was also husband to his queen; father to his royal children and more generally to all his people; the truest of knights; the most devout of God's servants.

Introduction

Towards the middle of the thirteenth century an unknown scribe used a blank space on one of the folios of the Melrose Chronicle manuscript to calculate the number of years that had passed between various historical events and his own day. The jottings date to the period between March and June 1264, and the scribe was apparently moved to set his thoughts down on parchment following the birth at Jedburgh, on 21 January of that same year, of a son to King Alexander III. The event was both joyous and, from the perspective of the Scottish political community, auspicious, for while the king had been married for more than a dozen years, to date his only child was a daughter. The birth of a son promised security in the future succession to the throne; certainly, this was how near-contemporary chroniclers viewed the event. One wrote that at news of the birth ‘God's praises rang throughout all the ends of Scotland.’ The cleric's effusive language almost certainly expressed genuine enthusiasm rather than empty verbiage, for in the later thirteenth century direct succession to the throne from father to son was still something of a new phenomenon; until relatively recently, in fact, primogeniture in Scotland had been regarded neither as ‘a fait accompli’ nor ‘inevitable’. The birth of a son, then, pre-empted the likelihood of dynastic conflict at the close of Alexander III's reign, and the boy was baptized immediately by Bishop Gamelin of St Andrews with the same name as his father and grandfather.

Historians have made extensive study of the many factors that went into the education and training of young men who were destined to rule the medieval kingdom of England. In the last decade, moreover, a significant amount of historical and literary work has been devoted to the study of how changing notions of love, friendship and affinity in the later Middle Ages influenced the lives and upbringing of royal and aristocratic youths in England and western Europe more generally. Collectively, this research has contributed to a new and much more nuanced understanding of the important place of childhood in framing and constructing fundamental ideas about gender, culture and community among the aristocracy.