We know, Most Holy Father and Lord, and we find it written in the records and histories of the ancients, that amongst other peoples of renown our Scottish nation has been distinguished by many tributes to their fame. We passed over from Greater Scythia across the Tyrrhenian Sea and beyond the Pillars of Hercules, and sojourned for many a year amid most savage races of Spain; but nowhere could any people, however barbarous, reduce us to subjection. From there twelve hundred years after the Departure of the Children of Isreal, we came to our abode in the West where we now dwell. The Britons were driven out: Picts were utterly destroyed; we were assailed again and again by Norse, Angle and Dane: but by many a victory and with endless toil we established ourselves here, and, as the historians of old bear witness, we have ever held our land free of servitude of every kind. Within this our realm there have reigned one hundred and thirteen Kings of our native royal dynasty, and not one of alien birth. If proof be needed of the quality and worth of our people, it shines forth for all to see in this that the King of Kings, our Lord Jesus Christ, after His Passion and Resurrection, chose us as almost the first to be called to his most holy faith, though we dwelt in the uttermost parts of the earth, and He would not that we should be confirmed therein by anyone except the first of his Apostles by calling, through the second or third in rank, Andrew the Meek, the brother of the blessed Peter, whom He appointed to be our leader and patron Saint for ever.

It was after pondering all these things in their minds that the Most Holy Fathers, your predecessors, fortified our realm and people, as the peculiar possession of the brother of the blessed Peter, with many favours and countless privelages. So it came about that under their protection our nation lived in freedom and in peace, until that august prince, Edward, King of England, the father of the present King, finding our realm without a King, and our people innocent of evil intent and still unused to assualts of war, came to us in the guise of a friend and allay and then made a hostile attack upon us. As for the wrongs he he inflicted upon us - the slaughter, violence, pillage, conflagration, prelates imprisoned, monasteries burned down and their inmated robbed and slain, and all the other outrages which he perpetuated on our people, sparing neither age nor sex nor religious order - none could describe nor even conceive these things unless he had actually experienced them.

From these innumerable evils, with the aid of Him Who woundeth and his hands make whole, we have been delivered by our most valiant Prince and King, Robert; who, that he might free his people and heritage from the hands of the enemy, rose like another Joshua or Maccabeus, and cheerfully endured toil and weeriness, hunger and peril. He it is that by the providence of God we have made our Prince and King, not only by right of succession according to our laws and customs, which we are resolved to maintain unto the death, but also with the due consent and assent of us all. Unto him, by whom salvation has been wrought unto our people, we are bound for the preservation of our liberties, both by force of law and out of gratitude for all he has done; and unto him we are determined in all things to adhere. But were he abandon the task to which he has set his hand or to show any disposition to subject us or our realm to the King of England or the English, we would instantly strive to expel him as our enemy and the betrayer of his own rights and ours, and we would choose another King to rule over us who would be equal to the task of our defence.

For so long as one hundred men remain alive, we shall never under any conditions submit to the domination of the English. It is not for glory or riches or honours that we fight, but only for liberty, which no good man will consent to lose but with his life.

For these reasons, revered Father and Lord, we most earnestly pray and from our hearts bessech your Holiness that in all sincerity and piety you will call to mind that with Him, whose earthly viceregent you are, there is no respect of persons and neither Jew nor Greek, Scot nor English. We entreat you to look with a father's eye upon the tribulations and distress which the English have brought upon us and upon the Church of God: and we ask that you will be pleased to admonish and exhort the King of England (who should rest content with what he has seeing that it was enough to satisfy at least seven Kings), urging him to leave us in peace in our poor Scotland, where we live on the the uttermost bounds of human habitation and covet nothing but our own. To secure such a peace we are willing in very deed to do anything in our power saving all these our vital interests. So to do, Holy Father, is a matter of real concern for yourself; for you see how the heathen rage against the Christian through the fault of the Christians, and how the boundaries of Christendom are being narrowed every day. See to it that your good name does not suffer if - which God forbid - the Church in any place suffers eclipse or offence while you are pope!. Make an appeal therefore to the Christian princes who are alleging as false pretexts for their inability to go on crusade to the Holy Land that they are at war with their neighbours - the truth being that they consider it more profitable and less dangerous to vanquish their weaker neighbours than go on crusade. But if only the King of England would leave us in peace, He from Whom no secrets are hid well knows how joyfully we and our King would go to the Holy Land; and this pledge we declare and testify to you as vicar of Christ and to the whole of Christendom.

But if your Holiness will not place reliance on these our assurances, prefering to lend too credulous an ear to the allegations of the English and continuing to show favour to them to our discomfiture, rest assured that the destruction of life, the perdition of souls and all other other evils which will ensue and which we shall inflict on the English and they on us, will be laid Most High on your account!. Wherefore we are and shall be, as in duty bound, prepared as obedient children to do your good pleasure as His Vicar. And unto Him, the King and Judge most high, we commit our cause, casting all care upon Him, and steadfastly trusting that He will endure us with courage and bring our enemies to nought. May the Most High preserve your Holiness in health and strength for the service of His Holy Church to length of days.

Executed at the Monastery of Arbroath in Scotland on the Sixth day of April, in the year of Grace One thousand three hundred and twenty and in the Fifteenth year of the Reign of our said King.