Sir

To the most Holy Father and Lord in Christ, the Lord John, by
divine providence Supreme Pontiff of the Holy Roman and Universal Church, his
humble and devout sons Duncan, Earl of Fife, Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray,
Lord of Man and of Annandale, Patrick Dunbar, Earl of March, Malise, Earl of
Strathearn, Malcolm, Earl of Lennox, William, Earl of Ross, Magnus, Earl of
Caithness and Orkney, and William, Earl of Sutherland; Walter, Steward of
Scotland, William Soules, Butler of Scotland, James, Lord of Douglas, Roger
Mowbray, David, Lord of Brechin, David Graham, Ingram Umfraville, John Menteith,
guardian of the earldom of Menteith, Alexander Fraser, Gilbert Hay, Constable of
Scotland, Robert Keith, Marischal of Scotland, Henry St Clair, John Graham,
David Lindsay, William Oliphant, Patrick Graham, John Fenton, William Abernethy,
David Wemyss, William Mushet, Fergus of Ardrossan, Eustace Maxwell, William
Ramsay, William Mowat, Alan Murray, Donald Campbell, John Cameron, Reginald
Cheyne, Alexander Seton, Andrew Leslie, and Alexander Straiton, and the other
barons and freeholders and the whole community of the realm of Scotland send all
manner of filial reverence, with devout kisses of his blessed feet.

Most Holy Father and Lord, we know and from the chronicles and books of the
ancients we find that among other famous nations our own, the Scots, has been
graced with widespread renown. They journeyed from Greater Scythia by way of the
Tyrrhenian Sea and the Pillars of Hercules, and dwelt for a long course of time
in Spain among the most savage tribes, but nowhere could they be subdued by any
race, however barbarous. Thence they came, twelve hundred years after the people
of Israel crossed the Red Sea, to their home in the west where they still live
today. The Britons they first drove out, the Picts they utterly destroyed, and,
even though very often assailed by the Norwegians, the Danes and the English,
they took possession of that home with many victories and untold efforts; and,
as the historians of old time bear witness, they have held it free of all
bondage ever since. In their kingdom there have reigned one hundred and thirteen
kings of their own royal stock, the line unbroken a single foreigner.

The high qualities and deserts of these people, were they not otherwise
manifest, gain glory enough from this: that the King of kings and Lord of lords,
our Lord Jesus Christ, after His Passion and Resurrection, called them, even
though settled in the uttermost parts of the earth, almost the first to His most
holy faith. Nor would He have them confirmed in that faith by merely anyone but
by the first of His Apostles -- by calling, though second or third in rank --
the most gentle Saint Andrew, the Blessed Peter's brother, and desired him to
keep them under his protection as their patron forever.

The Most Holy Fathers your predecessors gave careful heed to these things and
bestowed many favours and numerous privileges on this same kingdom and people,
as being the special charge of the Blessed Peter's brother. Thus our nation
under their protection did indeed live in freedom and peace up to the time when
that mighty prince the King of the English, Edward, the father of the one who
reigns today, when our kingdom had no head and our people harboured no malice or
treachery and were then unused to wars or invasions, came in the guise of a
friend and ally to harass them as an enemy. The deeds of cruelty, massacre,
violence, pillage, arson, imprisoning prelates, burning down monasteries,
robbing and killing monks and nuns, and yet other outrages without number which
he committed against our people, sparing neither age nor sex, religion nor rank,
no one could describe nor fully imagine unless he had seen them with his own
eyes.

But from these countless evils we have been set free, by the help of Him Who
though He afflicts yet heals and restores, by our most tireless Prince, King and
Lord, the Lord Robert. He, that his people and his heritage might be delivered
out of the hands of our enemies, met toil and fatigue, hunger and peril, like
another Macabaeus or Joshua and bore them cheerfully. Him, too, divine
providence, his right of succession according to or laws and customs which we
shall maintain to the death, and the due consent and assent of us all have made
our Prince and King. To him, as to the man by whom salvation has been wrought
unto our people, we are bound both by law and by his merits that our freedom may
be still maintained, and by him, come what may, we mean to stand.

Yet if he should give up what he has begun, and agree to make us or our
kingdom subject to the King of England or the English, we should exert ourselves
at once to drive him out as our enemy and a subverter of his own rights and
ours, and make some other man who was well able to defend us our King; for, as
long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be
brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor
honours that we are fighting, but for freedom -- for that alone, which no honest
man gives up but with life itself.

Therefore it is, Reverend Father and Lord, that we beseech your Holiness with
our most earnest prayers and suppliant hearts, inasmuch as you will in your
sincerity and goodness consider all this, that, since with Him Whose Vice-Regent
on earth you are there is neither weighing nor distinction of Jew and Greek,
Scotsman or Englishman, you will look with the eyes of a father on the troubles
and privation brought by the English upon us and upon the Church of God. May it
please you to admonish and exhort the King of the English, who ought to be
satisfied with what belongs to him since England used once to be enough for
seven kings or more, to leave us Scots in peace, who live in this poor little
Scotland, beyond which there is no dwelling-place at all, and covet nothing but
our own. We are sincerely willing to do anything for him, having regard to our
condition, that we can, to win peace for ourselves.

This truly concerns you, Holy Father, since you see the savagery of the
heathen raging against the Christians, as the sins of Christians have indeed
deserved, and the frontiers of Christendom being pressed inward every day; and
how much it will tarnish your Holiness's memory if (which God forbid) the Church
suffers eclipse or scandal in any branch of it during your time, you must
perceive. Then rouse the Christian princes who for false reasons pretend that
they cannot go to help of the Holy Land because of wars they have on hand with
their neighbours. The real reason that prevents them is that in making war on
their smaller neighbours they find quicker profit and weaker resistance. But how
cheerfully our Lord the King and we too would go there if the King of the
English would leave us in peace, He from Whom nothing is hidden well knows; and
we profess and declare it to you as the Vicar of Christ and to all Christendom.

But if your Holiness puts too much faith in the tales the English tell and
will not give sincere belief to all this, nor refrain from favouring them to our
prejudice, then the slaughter of bodies, the perdition of souls, and all the
other misfortunes that will follow, inflicted by them on us and by us on them,
will, we believe, be surely laid by the Most High to your charge.

To conclude, we are and shall ever be, as far as duty calls us, ready to do
your will in all things, as obedient sons to you as His Vicar; and to Him as the
Supreme King and Judge we commit the maintenance of our cause, csating our cares
upon Him and firmly trusting that He will inspire us with courage and bring our
enemies to nought.

May the Most High preserve you to his Holy Church in holiness and health and
grant you length of days.
Given at the monastery of Arbroath in Scotland on the sixth day of the month
of April in the year of grace thirteen hundred and twenty and the fifteenth year
of the reign of our King aforesaid.
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