The Breaking of Britain: cross-border society and Scottish independence 1216-1314

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The Scottish Wars of Independence created a new and fundamental divide in the north of Britain. There had long been a political border in the north, but by 1314 there was a social border as well: it was no longer possible to hold land on both sides of the divide and be a member of both the English and Scottish realms. It has been argued that this was a violent change of direction because England and Scotland had been moving closer together, not further apart, during the thirteenth century. Alternatively, it has been suggested that in the century before the Wars 'the national shutters' between England and Scotland were coming down. It has also been argued from chronicle evidence that inhabitants of south-east Scotland saw themselves as English at the beginning of the thirteenth century but by the 1280s identified themselves as Scots. The project seeks to investigate whether these divergent views can be resolved by focusing on the key elements of society and identity. To gain a fresh understanding of society, the critical mass of detail that is required for researching social structures and patterns will be achieved by creating two free-access web-based resources. The first is an extension of the database of the 'Paradox of Medieval Scotland, 1093-1286' (PoMS) to embrace all individuals and their social interactions recorded in documents relating to Scotland 1286-1314. The second is a new database of all information about all individuals in extant royal records relating to Northumberland, Cumberland and Westmorland for the three northern counties of England in English Royal Records 1216-1307. Both will be interlinked, and will be designed to be fruitful for scholars and informative for beginners. They will enable the project to investigate social structures and patterns of development on both sides of the Border. In particular, although the gentry-who were the backbone of local society and government-have been the subject of scholarly debate, its precise nature in northern England and whether it had parallels north of the Border has yet to be researched. The database research will be complemented by a detailed investigation of a cohort of gentry families in Northumberland and Cumberland. Further down the social scale, the middling folk and more substantial peasantry who formed the common army of Scotland played a crucial role in the Wars. What was their role in peacetime as well as war, and how (if it all) did this differ from that of their counterparts in northern England? To gain a fresh understanding of identity the key resource is chronicles, not as a source for events but as a window into the assumptions and interests of those who wrote and approved these texts. Striking statements of English identity in southern Scotland can be found in this context in the late twelfth century. The most important Scottish chronicle of the period, the Chronicle of Melrose, survives (very unusually) as a manuscript updated by 44 scribes during the thirteenth century. The last section (1216 to 1282) will be edited and translated deploying an innovative method that will enhance the reader's understanding of the varied and changing patterns of interest revealed by the chronicle's scribes. It will also be investigated, alongside a cross-border chronicle kept by a friar in Scotland (to 1297) and another Scottish chronicle (datable to 1285), for what they reveal about Scottish perceptions of English kingship immediately before the Wars of Independence. By creating new research tools and methods, the Breaking of Britain will investigate whether the Wars of Independence and the divide they created in cross-border society were a rupture or a natural outcome of longer-term developments. The results will be freely accessible to a wide spectrum of users, and should contribute a deeper understanding of a pivotal phase in British History that is particularly relevant today when the relationship between Scotland and England is being actively debated.