Quote Originally Posted by jkdesq
...Bruce, ironically of far "nobler" blood, came up with the idea of fighting what was essentially a guerilla, and ungentlemanly, war against the English and the Comyn faction...
It's interesting that at the other end of the country, in north Wales and the Marches, very similar tactics were being used by another Anglo-Norman aristocrat against Edward - Roger de Mortimer (who, unlike Wallace, really did have an affair with Edward II's queen, and who it is conjectured was the actual father of Edward III - described in a review at the time of the release of Braveheart as "Wales' Revenge") - at roughly the same time as Bruce's guerrilla. Edward I was every bit as brutal in Wales as he was in Scotland - as described in Gray's evocative poem "Cold is Cadwallo's tongue, that hushed the stormy main; brave Urien sleeps upon his craggy bed; mountains, ye mourn in vain Modred,...".

I can't help feeling that there may have been an economic impulsion to Edward's imperial policy, as well as the strategic need to subdue dangerous neighbours to his north and west in order to leave him free for his more important French adventures.

Berwick-on-Tweed, a major Hanseatic port, was possibly the richest town in the British Isles, and its revenues would have been invaluable for Edward's campaigns. But without subduing the Scots, for whom it was an important trade entrepot, there would have been no way that he could have grabbed the port's revenues.