History, Wonder Tales, Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends The Flemish | Page 55

weight behind John Baliol - a man who, although undoubtedly a Fleming, was not
descended in the male line from the old comital house of the Eustaces. Nor has it
been properly appreciated that the Ragman Rolls of the 1290s, by which an allegiance
to Edward I had to be sworn by men described by later historians as “Scottish nobles”,
were simply lists of important people of Flemish ancestry wherever they might be
found; in fact many of the names are recognisable as belonging to Boulonnais living in
the East Midlands, among them the Seatons of Rutland and descendants of the
Lincolnshire Gilbert of Ghent.
The patriotic William Wallace was a Scottish Celt, unacceptable as king to the
Boulonnais nobility, though his bravery commended itself to some of them. Robert
Bruce, cousin of the Eustaces, directly descended by several lines from both
Charlemagne and David’s Queen Maud, was eligible in every way. Robert de Bruce’s
ancestor came into England carrying the azure lion of Louvain, and must have been of
that house, whose Maud de Louvain was the wife of Count Eustace I of Boulogne.
Members of Robert’s family may well have been granted estates in Normandy at, for
instance, Brix as tradition states, by a Conqueror anxious to procure both their
allegiance and their Flemish ability to provide trade. Robert de Bruce very properly
gave up the Louvain lion to Jocelyn de Louvain, a senior son of the family, when that
prince married the heiress to the Percys; and the saltire, in the colours of Boulogne,
became the mark of Bruce. And Edward I’s rage and dismay at Bruce’s coronation at
Scone on March 27, 1306, may be gauged by that curious ceremony some two
months later in Westminster Hall, on Whit Sunday, May 22, when he “caused two live
swans with gold chains about their necks to be brought into the Hall, and laying his
hands upon them, swore with all his attendant nobles before God, Our Lady and the
Swans’ that he would be avenged on the Scots”. It was a highly expressive action.
Edward’s public vow-taking was half a defiance, half a capitulation. The swan was
then, as it is still, the central heraldic mark of the arms of Boulogne. For the swan
legend (in spite of Lohengrin) seems to have originated at the castle of Bouillon, which
was the inheritance of Eustace II’s second son, Godfrey of Bouillon. Scottish writers
have followed a Celtic tradition which preferred to allot the thistle to a legend of
Kenneth MacAlpine rather than give it its true (and much more thought-provoking)
significance as the personal emblem of Godfrey of Bouillon, who led so many
founders of Scottish families on the First Crusade.
Investigation into the rise of the European nobility - where they came from, who they
were - has only recently become a subject of interest to continental historians. These
20th-century researchers have put forward various theories; some of them are in
conflict with each other, chiefly because of regional differences. But the belief that the
noble families of the northern part o bF