Arbroath, Declaration of

Declaration made on 26 April 1320 by Scottish nobles of their loyalty to King Robert (I) the Bruce and of Scotland's identity as a kingdom independent of England. A response to papal demands that the Scots should yield to English claims, the document was probably composed by Robert the Bruce's chancellor, Bernard de Linton. In the 20th century, it has become a manifesto for Scottish nationalism.

It claimed that Scotland had enjoyed an ‘uninterrupted succession of 113 kings, all of our own native and royal stock’. It was cleverly asserted that the Scots would depose even King Robert if he capitulated to the English, ‘for it is not for glory, riches nor honours that we fight, but for freedom alone’.