The Oath of The Swans
The killing of John Comyn took Edward by complete surprise. News travelled slowly: it was some thirteen days after the event that the details reached his court at Winchester, and even then the full circumstances were unclear. The murder was initially described as the 'work of some people who are doing their utmost to trouble the peace and quiet of the realm of Scotland', but he learned the true facts later. On 5 April, he appointed Aymer de Valence, Comyn's brother-in-law, and the future Earl of Pembroke, as his plenipotentiary in Scotland, with powers to raise the Dragon Banner, signifying that no quarter would be given to Bruce and his adherents; or, as the chronicler John Barbour puts it 'to burn and slay and raise dragon'.
At Westminster on 20 May, the king knighted the Prince of Wales and 250 other young men in preparation for the coming war. A banquet was held after the ceremony during which two decorated swans were presented to the king. Edward then vowed 'by the God of Heaven and these swans' to avenge Comyn's death and the treachery of the Scots. On his demand the newly created knights took a similar oath.
Read more about this topic: Battle Of Methven
Famous quotes containing the words oath and/or swans:
“Here I swear, and as I break my oath may ... eternity blast me, here I swear that never will I forgive Christianity! It is the only point on which I allow myself to encourage revenge.... Oh, how I wish I were the Antichrist, that it were mine to crush the Demon; to hurl him to his native Hell never to rise again—I expect to gratify some of this insatiable feeling in Poetry.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
“O death, come close mine eyes;
More geese than swans now live, more fools than wise.”
—Orlando Gibbons (1583–1625)