Declaration of Arbroath

The Declaration of Arbroath is a letter dated 6 April 1320, written in Latin in the names of the barons and community of the kingdom of Scotland and addressed to Pope John XXII, asserting Scotland's status as a free and independent kingdom during the First War of Scottish Independence against England. It was issued not long after King Robert I, known as Robert the Bruce, had been excommunicated by the pope for defying calls for a truce with England, and the letter combines a defense of Robert's kingship with a broader argument that the Scots had always been a free people who would accept no foreign overlord. Its best-known passage declares that the Scots fight not for glory, riches or honors but for freedom alone, which no good man gives up except with his life, and it warns that were Robert himself ever to submit Scotland to English rule, the community of the realm would drive him out as their enemy and choose another king to defend their freedom. Sealed by around fifty Scottish nobles and clergy, the original sent to the papal court at Avignon has been lost, and only a single surviving manuscript, held today by the National Records of Scotland, preserves its text. Largely forgotten for centuries, the Declaration was rediscovered and printed in the late seventeenth century and has since been read as an early statement of the idea that royal authority rests on the consent of the governed, a principle later cited as an influence on the American Declaration of Independence.