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William Scott - Proofs

The Crux of the Proof: three sources and an explanation of topography.

© 27 Feb 2019

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1. Barbour [1375]: The English camped in the Carse because of the pools of water.. [The English] 'camped that night down in the Carse and cleaned and made ready their equipment for the battle in the morning. And because in the Carse there were pools of water..' (useful for men and animals to drink on a midsummer day). Barbour, The Bruce, BK XII line 391-395.

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2. This Carse is unique (page 146 GB) in regularly having many pools of water after heavy rain. 34 have been counted at one time, some 100 yards long and a yard deep. Every map shows that the road across the Carse has had to zigzag around them, right back to the first proper map, Roy's c1750, page 141 GB and aerial photos 2 and 5. Pools are therefore a defining condition of this Carse. It is unique because it is an enclosed Carse which has a high water table: rainfall forms pools in the undulations which last for days. Other carses end at the R Forth, 40 ft down. So the water table falls sharply and pools cannot form in them because the rain is absorbed and they had huge bogs instead: Livilands and Skeoch.

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3. Brut y Tywysogyon. [1314]: 'Llywellyn, Bishop of St Asaph died and Dafydd ap Bleddyn was elected in his place on the eve of the feast of St John at Midsummer (24th June 1314). And on that day occurred the encounter in the Pools , and Gilbert the Younger, earl of Clare, and many of the men of England besides, were slain by the Scots. And the King of England ignominiously fled from that encounter. [Peniarth MS 20 version, trans Prof Thomas Jones, 1952, p123, para 9] This is The Battle of Bannockburn. You can see a copy on GB p159. The footnote is fully explained in GB Ch VI. Polles or Pollys is obviously pools from the photos p130,136-140, alone. They are also in BR plates 14-19; BP red 33-37, 47.

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4. Scalacronica: [The Scots] at sunrise on the morrow marched out of the wood in three divisions of infantry. They directed their course boldly upon the English army... They [the English] mounted in great alarm.' [Maxwell's translation] page 55.

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5. The English camped in the Carse 'because of the pools of water there'. [Barbour] The battle was fought among the pools of water. [Brut y Tywysogyon] The English 'mounted in great alarm' [Scalacronica]: They were caught unawares in their camp by the Scots who crossed the Carse from Balquhiderock Wood, silently, at dawn and set their pikes close to the English cavalry, cutting their space to charge. GB Ch XII esp 297-300. Bruce saw that the English, after so much 'Drinkhail and Wassail' (Le Baker) all night, expecting a foxhunt of Scottish peasants in the morning, could do nothing about it. The cavalry, when mounted, charged as individuals, easily halted; pulled down and slain. Bruce saved Scottish lives by setting his pikes twice, very close.

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What Pools? Here are some photos which have been taken on several occasions. Note: the pools in the North Carse have caused the road, Millhall Road, to zigzag around them: on every map back to Roy's GB p141-143, the first worthy map, 1750. No historian in seven centuries ever noticed the pools or understood their significance. They were present on 24th June 1314 because the sources (above) tell us so.

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The translations are proved in GB Ch VI, photos of the pools p130,136-140; also in BP 44-46 (with many photos) red 33-37 and BR p350-359; photos of pools plates 14a,b-19a,b. The map, shown 12 times in each book, at different stages of the battle, that took six years to make and justify which has been confirmed, is essential.

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There is a mountain of other evidence in other sources and the ground which a full proof makes use of. But some proofs of important results, not yet seen, are short, a few lines. These are elegant and dazzling. The sixty pages of Ch VI GB while very illuminating, full of photos of pools, pond, knoll, burns, Carse, maps and documents, can be replaced by six lines of text. The full justification of the map is about 200 pages in the three books BR,BP,GB. All of them have many photos of the ground, showing the natural defences of the Dryfield, Milton Ford, especially.

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Metahistory At the level of Metahistory, the consideration of the processes involved in this research and its status as knowledge, BR and this work, BP, should be considered as works of science. Every relevant source was assembled, translated where necessary and analysed very precisely, right down to the criteria for reliability and relevance and the method of analysis which was no arbitrary process but one that would produce the same results whoever performed it; for a few differences of interpretation, all that are possible, would make no difference to the conclusions ultimately reached. And these are compelling: outrageous to believe the contrary. Every argument for every conclusion was carefully examined for its compulsive force and a surprising number were found to be alphas, many, indeed, alpha plus: inconceivable to be otherwise. This kind of examination is novel and precise and scientific in character. Everything, every fact about the ground or about what the written sources tell us or even about these in combination which has been discovered in BR and BP can be verified and confirmed for they are all justified in this work.

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Every observation necessary to confirm what is stated can be repeated. If anything will hold up the acceptance of this research it is precisely the failure to perform, in the various maps, in the written sources and on the ground, all the actions necessary to achieve this confirmation. What characterizes science is the exhaustiveness of the investigation; the completeness and precision of the explanation: everything makes sense and fits without contradiction; the compelling power of the arguments; and the repeatability of its experiments when these are involved [Einstein’s papers are not write ups of experiments in a lab but gedangken experiments: thought experiments, like the Charisma-Population Argument; Darwin’s Origin of Species is not a record of experiments at all]. When repetitions under the same circumstances or efforts at confirmation produce the same results, these become part of the knowledge of the science. Science is not mere opinion (like all histories of this subject before). It is a set of compelling conclusions, fully justified, which explain the issues at hand.

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