Figure 5 The Declaration of Arbroath is a famous document held in the National Archives of Scotland. Written at the time of the wars of independence with the English, which started with Edward I’s attempt to conquer Scotland in 1296, the declaration is a letter from the country’s earls and barons to the Pope, asking him to recognize Scotland’s status as an independent nation. While their claim that the Scots had migrated from ‘Greater Scythia by the Tyrrhene Sea and the Pillars of Hercules’ would be questioned by modern historians, their sense of Scottish identity is manifest in their affirmation that 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’