![]() ![]() The maintenance of public morality was a central aspect of aristocratic life throughout the medieval period. ![]() He currently works for the National Trust for Scotland at the Battle of Bannockburn Visitor Centre. ![]() Callum WatsonĬallum Watson graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 2016 with a History PhD. It argues that Barbour was responding to the particular circumstances facing his aristocratic audience in late fourteenth-century Scotland and using a broadly ‘chivalric’ framework of ideas to appeal to their sensibilities. This paper will explore the justifications Barbour offers for the withdrawal of allegiance, as well as the circumstances in which reconciliation is possible. Instead, shifts in loyalty are considered legitimate when characters believe that their lord is not fulfilling his responsibilities. Whilst Barbour acknowledges that providing support to an enemy constitutes treason he does not always condemn those who switch sides during the conflict as traitors. In the poem, characters change their allegiance from the Scots to the English and vice versa. This paper seeks to examine the issue of shifting loyalties in John Barbour’s Bruce, a late fourteenth-century poem recounting the life of King Robert I and his most celebrated lieutenants. ‘Their treason undid them’: Crossing the Boundary between Scottish and English in Barbour’s Bruce ![]()
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