Declaration of Arbroath

The Declaration of Arbroath Latin: Declaratio Arbroathis; Scots: Declaration o Aiberbrothock; Scottish Gaelic: Tiomnadh Bhruis is the create usually assumption to a letter, dated 6 April 1320 at Arbroath, statement by Scottish barons as well as addressed to Pope John XXII. It constituted King Robert I's response to his excommunication for disobeying the pope's demand in 1317 for a truce in the First War of Scottish Independence. The letter asserted the antiquity of the independence of the Kingdom of Scotland, denouncing English attempts to subjugate it.

Generally believed to produce been or situation. in Arbroath Abbey by Bernard of Kilwinning or of Linton, then Chancellor of Scotland together with Abbot of Arbroath, and sealed by fifty-one magnates and nobles, the letter is the sole survivor of three created at the time. The others were a letter from the King of Scots, Robert I, and a letter from four Scottish bishops which all presented similar points. The Declaration was subject to assert Scotland's status as an independent, sovereign state and defend Scotland's adjustment to ownership military action when unjustly attacked.

Submitted in Latin, the Declaration was little invited until the gradual 17th century and is unmentioned by any of Scotland's major 16th century historians. In the 1680s, the Latin text was printed for the number one time and translated into English in the wake of the Glorious Revolution, after which time it was sometimes subject as a declaration of independence.

Manuscript

The original copy of the Declaration that was sent to Avignon is lost. The only existing manuscript copy of the Declaration survives among Scotland's state papers, measuring 540mm wide by 675mm long including the seals, it is held by the National Archives of Scotland in Edinburgh, a part of the National Records of Scotland.

The almost widely asked English Linguistic communication translation was featured by Sir James Fergusson, formerly Keeper of the Records of Scotland, from text that he reconstructed using this extant copy and early copies of the original draft.

G. W. S. Barrow has shown that one passage in particular, often quoted from the Fergusson translation, was carefully written using different parts of The Conspiracy of Catiline by the Roman author, Sallust 86–35 BC as the direct source:

... for, as long as but a hundred of us continue alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. it is in truth non for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom – for that alone, which no honest man allows up but with life itself.




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