Breaking down the defences of this mighty Scottish city

The National

22-04-2025

Superbly played by Patrick McGoohan, Longshanks is made out to be the villain of villains. But when you know the history of that English king, you might think they were understating the case, certainly in Longshanks's dealings with Scotland and the Scots.
Some English historians cite Edward's achievements as a Crusader and reformer of the governance of England – another of his nicknames was 'lawgiver' – as evidence that he was a great king, but his dealings with Scotland and Wales were such that he can only be remembered as a despicable tyrant.
What he did to Wales was appalling. Though the country was often rent with internal division, it did unite for a brief period of independence in the 13th century until Longshanks, having dealt ruthlessly with his own nobility, decided to subjugate Wales once and for all through vastly superior military might.
By 1283, he was in total command of Wales, having executed the Welsh leader Dafydd ap Gruffudd for 'high treason' – Dafydd, not Sir William Wallace, is the first person in recorded history to have been hanged, drawn and quartered, a punishment said to have been dreamed up by Longshanks himself. Edward then built himself a ring of castles to control Wales and all opposition to him was cruelly suppressed.
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The Scottish nobility in the 1290s should therefore have known better than to let Edward judge the process by which John Balliol became king, as Longshanks saw that verdict as part of his campaign to impose his overlordship on Scotland.
When Balliol signed the Auld Alliance with France in 1295, a furious Longshanks assembled a huge army and marched north, massacring 4000 men, women and children at Berwick, then Scotland's most important port, and routing the Scottish army at Dunbar in April 1296.
Edward then took various castles and installed garrisons in them, including Dundee – then commanded by the English soldier FitzAlan – which had previously been surrendered to him by the Scots, and expelled Balliol from his own kingdom.
To add insult to injury, Edward I cancelled Dundee's royal burgh status, which was probably one of the reasons why the people of Dundee almost to a man and woman wanted the English out of their burgh and Scotland as a whole.
Wallace then led the uprising against English occupation, and there is no doubt that Dundee featured greatly in the Wars of Independence. One account was promulgated by the poet Blind Harry, writing more than 150 years after Wallace died, though he did rely on the works of John Blair, who knew Wallace and wrote a biography of him in Latin.
The legend has it that Wallace, who completed his education at Dundee, was still a teenager – sources date this event to 1288 – when the son of the English commander of Dundee Castle, Selby, insulted him, with Wallace promptly sticking his dagger in the young Englishman.
According to the legend, he was outlawed for the killing and began gathering the friends and warriors who stayed with him to the bitter end. That is why there is a plaque at St Paul's Episcopal Cathedral which states that 'near this spot William Wallace struck the first blow for Scottish independence c1288'.
After the disaster at Dunbar, Wallace and his small army, with Sir Andrew Murray's forces, had re-taken several castles and were in the process of besieging Dundee Castle when word arrived that an English army had been sent to Scotland by Longshanks to put down the Wallace-Murray uprising.
The Scottish forces raced from Dundee to Stirling and there set the trap which saw the English army routed at Stirling Bridge on September 11, 1297.
According to the historian Thomson, the Scottish army marched straight back to Dundee: 'Wallace, intent upon the complete liberation of his country, spent no time in idleness. From Stirling he impatiently retraced his steps to renew the siege of Dundee; and, with weapons still reeking
with the blood of their fallen enemies, he, and his victorious bands, presented themselves once more before its gates.
'The garrison, terrified at the re-appearance of their formidable foes, rendered still more formidable by their recent victory, and unwilling to expose themselves to their fury, if exasperated by a useless resistance, surrendered the castle upon condition of having their lives spared. This inglorious convention prevented an assault, and the dastardly garrison departed for England.'
Longshanks
Having taken back Dundee Castle, the following March Wallace appointed a new Scottish governor of the castle in one of the few charters he issued in the name of the deposed King John Balliol while acting as Guardian of Scotland.
Alexander Skirmischur (a name which became Scrymgeour), was made constable of the Castle 'of Dunde' as stated in the charter and was granted lands in and around the burgh, beginning his family's long association with the burgh and city that continues to this day – the current Earl of Dundee is Alexander Scrymgeour.
In 1303, Longshanks came north of the Forth with an army following the Scottish victory at the Battle of Roslin, and the English took possession of the castle and sacked the burgh, but the mystery is what happened to the castle after their occupation ended prior to the Battle of Bannockburn.
Historic Environment Scotland states on its canmore.org website: 'It has been claimed that the castle was destroyed on the instruction of Wallace. There is, however, more than adequate documentation to show that it survived into the 14th century, falling into the hands of both the English and the Scots but after 1314 all recorded evidence of the castle disappears.
'Whether it was dismantled by Edward Bruce, brother of the king, or abandoned and destroyed by retreating English under William de Montfichet, is not certain. Robert I's charter to Nicol Scrymgeour (son of Alexander) in February 1318, continuing him in the office of constable of Dundee, makes no mention of a castle, nor does the king's charter of 1327 confirming to the burgh all its ancient rights and liberties.'
Personally I think Bruce, as he did with other castles once they had been liberated, had Dundee Castle demolished so that it could never be used again by the English. It was not a slight to the burgh as the Bruce thought highly of Dundee – it was where the Scottish clergy met to decide to support his kingship.
Yet his castle-razing policy could not have any exemptions and I think that is why it does not feature in written history at all after 1314.
Even without a castle, Dundee developed both as a port and increasingly as a centre for commerce, helped by the advantages of its royal charter which allowed markets and up to eight 'fairs' per year. The burgh also had a well-educated merchant class, the grammar school having been around since the 1220s.
Dundee was sufficiently economically powerful to be one of the burghs that agreed to pay the ransom for King David II, captured by the English at the Battle of Neville's Cross in 1346. David did not forget Dundee's contribution and one of the first things he did on returning to Scotland after 11 years in captivity was to grant Dundee another royal charter confirming all the previous ones and adding some more benefits.
It is often reported that during the war between a Franco-Scottish alliance and the English under King Richard II, the attempts to expel the English from the Scottish Borders led to an invasion by forces commanded by Richard's uncle, John of Gaunt. English chroniclers crowed about John of Gaunt burning Dundee, but modern Scottish historians have concluded that no such event occurred and the invasion became a disaster for the English.
That lack of action against Dundee may well be why the castle was never rebuilt and why, unlike other burghs, Dundee at that point had no defensive walls.
Dundee's reputation as an open port meant considerable trade developed with the continent where demand for Scottish wool and woollen goods – increasingly made in Dundee – was huge, though perhaps not as huge for one of Dundee's main imports, French wine.
Dundee suffered massively during the Rough Wooing, that war which England waged against Scotland for the latter's deliberate ignoring of the Treaty of Greenwich. Even as the burgh was thriving, an English fleet arrived in the Tay and occupied Broughty Castle, east of Dundee.
A French visitor recorded what happened next in 1548, reporting that the invasion force 'seized upon a little hill distant from Broughty nine hundred paces, and here they built a very fine fortress, and spared no cost to render it admirable, and to furnish it with men and ammunition of all sorts.
'They sent betwixt sixteen and seventeen hundred lances, both foot and horse, to Dundee, which they entered without opposition: For although this last is one of the most beautiful, rich, and populous towns in the kingdom, and though 'twere easy to render it impregnable, yet, as the Scots have ever been careless to fortify their country, those in Dundee had no other defence than the walls of their private houses.'
The English army sacked the burgh and burned most of it. Yet the city of Dundee recovered quickly and played a major role in the Reformation of 1560, John Knox writing that it was the first town to become fully reformed.
Perhaps in a bid to make peace with the burgh, in 1564 the Roman Catholic monarch Mary, Queen of Scots, gave lands previously owned by the Dominicans and Franciscans to the people of Dundee for use as a burial ground, which is still known as the Howff.
Dundee finally gained some protective walls in the late 1500s, and they proved their uselessness in 1645 in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, often referred to as the English Civil War, when the Marquess of Montrose, fighting for the Royalist cause, besieged and captured the town for a few hours.
A later Act of the Scottish Parliament which funded repairs recorded 'not onlie the slaughter of manie of the inhabitantis bot also a great pairt of the biggingis of the toun, whiche was ane of the chiefe of this kingdome, is fearfullie defaced and maist pairt of the inhabitantis rwined.'
Much worse was to come. Oliver Cromwell brought his New Model Army north to conquer Scotland, which was then led by the Covenanters who had made Charles II their king after his father was executed by the English Parliament in 1649. After the Scots lost the disastrous Battle of Dunbar in 1651, Cromwell put General George Monck in charge of his occupying army and, realising its strategic importance, Monck marched his forces to Dundee which refused to surrender.
The infamous Siege of Dundee then took place. As reported by all sources including Alexander Maxwell, for two days at the end of August, the English artillery blasted the walls and eventually the English troops broke into the town and ransacked it, killing men, women and children indiscriminately and taking huge amounts of plunder as well as hundreds of prisoners who were later sold into slavery.
According to the Rev Robert Small, the burgh of Dundee had a population of 8047 in 1651, and he thought more than 2000 men, women and children died during Monck's siege of the city. Others think that total was an exaggeration or an understatement.
It took Dundee the best part of a century to recover but industrialisation in the 18th and 19th centuries really made Dundee the great city it became.