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Hello! At Banachburn, the English lay, the Scots, they were in a far away, but waited for the break a day that glinted in the east.

The opening of Robert Burns' Perm, Banachburn, setting the scene for the tumultuous events of June 24th, 1314.

A few hours later, an outnumbered Scottish army, inspirationally led by Robert the Bruce, defeated the forces of the English king Edward II.

The English were put to flight, and their king narrowly avoided capture.

Banachburn was the culmination of a war of independence which had rumbled on for 18 years.

It paved the way for the restoration of full Scottish independence, or almost seven centuries on, it remains one of the defining events in the nation's history.

With me to discuss the Battle of Banachburn and Matthew Strickland, Professor of Medieval History at the University of Glasgow, Fiona Watson, on-rew research fellow in history at the University of Dundee, and Michael Brown, reader in history at the University of St Andrews.

Matthew Strickland, let's begin, we're going to talk about 1314, but let's begin earlier in the late 13th century with a dispute which became known as the Great Cause.

What was that, and why did it matter so much?

It has its origins in 1286 when King Alexander III of Scotland accidentally rides off a cliff at King Horn in V, and his death leads to...

Well, he was trying to visit his young wife, Yelander of Durr, for a night of passion, but it was a stormy night, and against his adviser's counsel, he decided to meet the journey, and he was found the next morning with the broken neck at the bottom of the cliff.

So the problem was, what a way to go, the problem was that his nearest direct successor was a young and sickly girl, Margaret the maid of Norway, his granddaughter, and any medieval kingdom facing a minority was faced with the time of great crisis.

So the Regency Government, known as the Guardians, looked to their powerful southern neighboured with the first for protection.

It's worth remembering that Edward I was the brother-in-law of Alexander III. He had a reputation on a European stage as an arbiter, the Justinian of England, and also it's important to bear in mind for what we're subsequently going to be talking about.

That there have been a period of unprecedented peace between England and Scotland.

Not 100 years? Yes, but 1217 is the last major conflict, but fairly much unbroken peace up to that point.

So, faced with this crisis of succession, the Guardians realised that they had to take action because two major competing factions exist within the late 13th century Scotland, the Bruce family and the powerful common family.

Initially, Edward and the Guardians broker a deal, which could have potentially been an enormous significance, to marry Edward I's son, Edward, to Margaret the maid of Norway, which would have been a union of the crowns.

But that is scuppered by the death of Margaret in 1290.

The Scots then ask Edward to adjudicate who among the nobles of Scotland has the best claim to the throne.

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