The big stick of Earl Warenne

The big stick of Earl Warenne. John de Warenne, 6th Earl of Surrey (1231-1304) is chiefly remembered for his defeat at Stirling Bridge in 1297. His personal performance on the day was catastrophic: he overslept, dithered, listened to bad advice, ignored good advice, and finally ran away very fast. His final humiliation came in Braveheart, when Warenne was deprived of his own defeat and left out of the film in favour of an entirely fictional ‘Lord Bottoms’.

Does one bad day mean Warenne was a blithering incompetent? Far from it. His military career got off to a poor start in 1264, when he and William de Valence ran like hares from the royalist defeat at Lewes. Lewes, however, was a day of shame and disaster for everyone on the royalist side, Edward included. Warenne and Valence got away safely to France and returned the following year. Like Henry Tudor in 1485, they landed on the coast of Pembrokeshire with a small band of soldiers and marched east, to link up with Edward before the battle of Evesham.

After the battle, Warenne was used as a ‘big stick’ against surviving pockets of rebels. He was given military command to crush resistance at Bury St Edmunds in 1266, and fought at Chesterfield in May of the same year. He was also present at the capture of Dover Castle, and consulted by Edward over defence operations on the Isle of Wight. Warenne was clearly trusted in military affairs, though he blotted his copy book a wee bit by committing murder in Henry III’s presence at Westminster.

The earl was no less trusted in Wales. He doesn’t appear to have served in 1277, but in 1282 was given independent command and advanced up the River Dee to capture Castell Dinas Bran. In 1287 he served at the siege of Dryslwyn, and in 1293-4 led part of the royal army in North Wales. In 1296 he routed the Scottish feudal host at Dunbar, apparently after luring them into a fatal charge by means of a feigned retreat.

By the time of Stirling Bridge, Warenne was a veteran of over thirty years of largely successful warfare. Despite his ghastly defeat at the hands of Moray and Wallace, the earl was not disgraced or stripped of command. Edward put him in charge of counter-operations, and in the following months Warenne recaptured Berwick and led the fourth battalion at Falkirk. Despite claiming he was too old and ill, he continued to serve in Scotland: in August 1300, at the River Cree, he rode beside King Edward in a massed cavalry charge that swept the army of Buchan, Comyn of Badenoch and d’Umfraville from the field.

John de Warenne, then. Not a very nice man, probably, and will always be remembered for Stirling Bridge. But he deserves better than Lord Bottoms.