Letter of the barons and community of England to the Pope
On the meeting of the parliament at Lincoln, the king, after having conciliated the good-will of his nobility, by. the confirmation of the great charters of liberties, and of the forests, the last of which he had evaded till now, ordered the pope's bull to be read to the earls and barons assembled in parliament; and, after great debates amongst the lawyers who were present, the nobility of England directed a spirited letter to the pope, with a hundred and four seals appended to it.In this epistle, after complimenting the Holy Roman Church upon the judgment and cau tion with which she respected and inviolably preserved the rights of every individual, they remarked, that a letter from the Holy See had been shown to them by their lord, King Edward, relating to certain matters touching the state and realm of Scotland, which contained divers wonderful and hitherto unheard-of propositions. It was notorious, they observed, in these parts of the world, that from the very first original of the kingdom of England, the kings thereof, as well in the times of the Britons as of the Saxons, enjoyed the superiority and direct dominion of the kingdom of Scotland, and continued either in actual or in virtual possession of the same through successive ages. They declared, that in temporals, the kingdom of Scotland did never, by any colour of right, belong to the Church of Rome; that it was an ancient fief of the crown and kings of England; and that the kings of Scotland, with their kingdom, had been subject only to the kings of England, and to no other.
That with regard to their rights, or other temporalities in that kingdom, the kings of England have never answered, nor ought they to answer, before any ecclesiastical or secular judge, and this on account of the freedom and pre-eminence of their royal dignity, and the custom to this effect observed through all ages. Wherefore, they concluded—"having diligently considered the letters of his Holiness, it is now, and for the future shall be, the unanimous and unshaken resolution of all and every one of us, that our lord the king, concerning his rights in Scotland, or other temporal rights, must in nowise answer judicially before the pope, or submit them to his judgment, or draw them into question by such submission; and that he must not send proxies or commissioners to his Holiness, more especially when it would manifestly tend to the disinheritance of the crown and royal dignity of England, to the notorious subversion of the state of the kingdom, and to the prejudice of our liberties, customs, and laws, delivered to them by their fathers; which, by their oaths, they were bound to observe and defend, and which, by the help of God, they would maintain with their whole force and power." And they added, "that they would not permit the king to do, or even to attempt, such strange and unheard-of things, even if he were willing so far to forget his royal rights. Wherefore they reverently and humbly entreated his Holiness to permit the king to possess his rights in peace, without diminution or disturbance.''
Having in this bold and spirited manner refused to submit his pretended rights in Scotland to the jurisdiction of the See of Rome, the monarch, about two months after the meeting of his parliament at Lincoln, directed a private letter to the pope, which he expressly declared was not a memorial to a judge, but altogether of a different description, and solely intended to quiet and satisfy the conscience of his Holy Father, and in which, at great length, and by arguments too trifling to require confutation, he explained to him the grounds upon which he rested his claim of superiority, and the reasons for his violent invasion of Scotland.