Rebel
King Edward quickly imposed an English administration on Scotland with the Earl of Surrey at its head. Sir Hugh de Cressingham, an efficient, if notoriously obnoxious, administrator with a history of service to the English Crown, was appointed Treasurer of Scotland with Walter Amersham installed as Chancellor. Under this hierarchy Edward filled the offices of Justiciars for Lothian, Scotia (i.e. the territories north of the Forth) and Galloway with English appointees. Most of the strategic Royal castles were placed into the keepership of Edward's nobles and English tax-collectors followed in their wake, imposing heavy taxes to fill their king's coffers, and corruptly exploiting the Scots populace to enrich themselves. Cressingham went about his task with energy and by the end of May 1297, had dispatched £5,188 6s. 8d. to King Edward. Edward also sought to conscript Scots, including the nobility of the defeated realm, into the armies being raised to fight in Flanders. News of this plan caused widespread alarm. A combination of these factors contributed to a growing restlessness under English rule.
While the Scots suffered English occupation, Andrew Moray continued to endure imprisonment but sometime in the winter of 1296-97, he escaped. Eventually he returned to his father's lands in the north of Scotland, though it is not known how or by what means he made his escape. Although there is no way of knowing how the effects of imprisonment affected him, it would quickly become clear that it was a determined man that returned to Scotland.
"In the month of May of the same year ", the Hemingsburgh Chronicle notes, "the perfidious race of Scots began to rebel." This first act of this rebellion was marked by two events: Andrew Moray proclaiming his defiance of English rule at Avoch; and the murder of William Hesilrig, the English sheriff of Lanark, on 3 May 1297, during an attack on the town led by William Wallace and Richard Lundie. News of Moray's actions quickly drew supporters to him. Alexander Pilchie, a burgess from Inverness, and a number of other burgesses from the town were amongst his earliest supporters. Although Sir Andrew Moray of Petty remained imprisoned in the Tower of London - where he apparently died as King Edward's prisoner - many of his tenants willingly joined his son. Sir William fitz Warin, the English constable of Urquhart Castle on the shores of Loch Ness, wrote to King Edward in July 1297: "Some evil disposed people have joined Andrew Moray at the castle of in Ross."
Read more about this topic: Andrew Moray
Famous quotes containing the word rebel:
“The rebel, unlike the revolutionary, does not attempt to undermine the social order as a whole. The rebel attacks the tyrant; the revolutionary attacks tyranny. I grant that there are rebels who regard all governments as tyrannical; nonetheless, it is abuses that they condemn, not power itself. Revolutionaries, on the other hand, are convinced that the evil does not lie in the excesses of the constituted order but in order itself. The difference, it seems to me, is considerable.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)
“It was evident that, both on account of the feudal system and the aristocratic government, a private man was not worth so much in Canada as in the United States; and, if your wealth in any measure consists in manliness, in originality and independence, you had better stay here. How could a peaceable, freethinking man live neighbor to the Forty-ninth Regiment? A New-Englander would naturally be a bad citizen, probably a rebel, there,—certainly if he were already a rebel at home.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I come from a long line of male chauvinists in a very traditional family. To rebel against my background, I didn’t shoot dope—I married a working woman.”
—Joe Bologna (20th century)