25/08/2026
On this day in 1330, the Battle of Teba took place in Andalusia, in what is now Spain. Though it took place far away from Scotland, the battle is of particular interest to us here at the Centre because among those killed in the fighting were six Scottish knights including at least one who had fought here at Bannockburn sixteen years earlier – ‘the Good’ Sir James Douglas. Douglas was carrying with him the heart of the late King Robert I of Scotland, having taken it on crusade in accordance with the king’s dying wishes.
King Robert had likely harboured crusading ambitions throughout his life. His grandfather – also Robert Bruce – had been on crusade alongside the future King Edward I of England in the 1270s. Robert’s grandfather seems to have had considerable influence over his grandson’s outlook, as Bruce’s tireless pursuit of the kingship of Scotland demonstrates. The king's wish to go on crusade may further reflect this influence. Crusading was a popular activity for the medieval military elite across Europe, and one that Scots engaged with enthusiastically. On one level, crusading offered such individuals an outlet for their violent tendencies when suitable conflict could not be found at home. There was, however, a perceived spiritual element to crusading too. The act of going on crusade was seen as a form of penance which could facilitate a person’s entry into heaven.
Crusading also drew on developing concepts of ‘racial’ thought. Racism as we understand it today is largely a product of European colonialism, beginning in the early modern period, but Dr Christine Heng has convincingly argued that ideas that would inform this later development began to emerge during the medieval period. What Heng calls ‘skin colour prejudice’ played a particularly prominent role in the ‘Reconquista’ of the Iberian Peninsula by the Christian kingdoms of what is now Spain from their Muslim neighbours, of which the Battle of Teba was part. The impact of these developing notions of ‘race’ in Scotland can be seen in the ‘Saracen’ helmet crests attributed to certain Scots with crusading connections in the late fourteenth-century Armorial de Gelre.
When King Robert died at his beloved manor house at Cardross near Dumbarton on 7 June 1329, his heart was removed and placed, in the words of the late fourteenth-century poet John Barbour, in ‘a cas of silver fine/Ennamylyt throu sutelté’ (‘a fine, skilfully enamelled silver case’). Douglas was to wear this case around his neck on the journey south and even into battle once he and his followers had reached their destination. The choice of Douglas indicates that this enterprise was always intended to take the king’s heart on crusade and not – as some popular histories still claim – a peaceful progress to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The supposed mission to Jerusalem is mentioned in a letter from King Edward III of England to King Alfonso XI of Castile and by a near-contemporary chronicler Jean le Bel, both of whom should be understood as being hostile to the Scots. Douglas’s rise to prominence under Bruce had been primarily built on his service as an energetic and successful war leaders. The personnel who accompanied Douglas on his final ‘quest’ – to use a suitably chivalric term – further underline this point. Those we can name are Sir William Sinclair, Sir William Keith of Galston, brothers Sir Robert and Sir Walter Logan, Sir Robert Menzies, Sir Simon Lockhart of Lee, plus a further twenty squires and other men-at-arms.
Douglas had likely served as a valet to Sinclair’s father Henry in 1306 or 1307, giving the two men connections that predated their service to King Robert. Keith had distinguished himself at the capture of Berwick from the English as ‘a new-mad[e] knycht’ in April 1318. The Logan brothers’ father Sir Walter had been executed for supporting King Robert’s initial bid for power in 1306. The Logans' south-eastern barony of Hartside was situated near Douglas’s lordship of Lauderdale, which had been granted to Douglas by Bruce in the mid-1320s, making them neighbours and natural allies. Menzies had witnessed several royal acta during 1328, but his apparent closeness to the king may have been thanks to an existing adherence to Douglas. Lockhart was a minor laird from Lanarkshire and was therefore a natural regional adherent of Douglas. Both Menzies and Lockhart appear only in later accounts of the crusade, but both had documented connections with Bruce and Douglas, and both disappear from surviving records in 1330, suggesting that they were indeed among the six knights mentioned by Le Bel (who nonetheless consistently misnames Douglas as ‘William’ throughout his text). Moreover, the subsequent heraldry of the Douglases, the Logans, and the Lockharts were likely intended to commemorate the part their kinsmen played in taking Bruce’s heart on crusade, though the Lockharts’ coat of arms is also a pun on the family name.
Douglas and co. appear to have progressed with great pomp and circumstance towards their destination. According to Le Bel, at Sluys they paused for several days while Douglas received visitors aboard their ship and held court with the heart of King Robert around his neck. The Scots were apparently feted at the court of King Alfonso XI too, and Barbour records an amusing – if probably fictitious – encounter between Douglas and an English knight there. The knight, whose face is heavily scarred, expresses disbelief that Douglas could have made it through so many battles, skirmishes. and other engagements without any injuries or disfigurements on his face. Douglas retorts, ‘Love God, all tym had I/Handis my hed for to wer’ (‘Praise God, I always had hands to protect my head’, Bk. 20, ll. 388-389). In other words, he had always been such a skilful fighter that no-one had yet been able to injure him!
The Scottish party joined a crusading army led by King Alfonso that proceeded to the town of Teba, where they besieged the castle (nowadays known as ‘Castillo de la Estrella’, or ‘Castle of the Star’), which at that time was held by forces loyal to Muhammad IV, the Nasrid Emir of Granada. The exact circumstances of Douglas’s death have been a source of much debate, and frankly invention, over the centuries. It is possible that Douglas was killed a day or two ahead of the actual battle in the more-or-less daily skirmishing that took place on the banks of the River Guadalteba, the besieging army’s only water supply. The ‘Gran Chrónica de Alfonso XI’, written in the 1370s, for instance claims that the day before the battle proper a foreign ‘conte’ was killed after attacking ‘inopportunely’. Douglas was not a ‘conte’ (equivalent to an earl, or ‘count’) by title, but the rewards he had received for a lifetime of fearsome military service to King Robert had certainly elevated him to the status of a magnate within Scotland. Moreover, the pomp with which he had apparently progressed on his crusade could well have given the impression to his Castilian hosts that he was a high-ranking aristocrat.
This is the interpretation preferred, for example, by Dr Blanca Heredia, while Prof. Steve Boardman has wryly opined that this embarrassing performance ‘has all the hallmarks of Scotland playing away in Europe’! Dr Sonja Cameron on the other hand has argued that the individual mentioned in the ‘Gran Chronica’ is unlikely to be Douglas. Cameron points not only to his incorrect title, but also to the fact that the sources that explicitly report Douglas’s death – which are discussed in detail below – all place it during the battle itself. It was not uncommon for armies in the so-called 'Reconquista’ to include contingents of foreign soldiers indulging themselves in crusading activities, and thus it is doubtful that Douglas and his companions were the only non-Castilian troops in Alfonso’s service in 1330. Moreover, a probably contemporary eulogy preserved by Walter Bower, Abbot of Inchcolm, dates Douglas’s death to 25 August, the day of the battle.
Instead, Cameron argues that Douglas was killed in the fighting that took place by the River Gaudalteba on 25th. The battle appears to have happened in stages, with part of the Nasrid army occupying a position near the river and Alfonso dispatching a portion of his army – including, on Cameron’s reading, Douglas and co. – to drive them off. A second part of the Nasrid army had intended to attack the siege camp, but on seeing that their forces at the river were already fleeing, this second division committed itself to the fighting by the river instead. It was at this point, Cameron contends, that Douglas and his companions were killed. This resonates with the account of Douglas’s death presented in a work known to historians as ‘Gesta Annalia II’ (‘Yearly Deeds’), completed in the 1360s. According to the ‘Gesta’, Douglas joined the King of ‘Spain’ (‘Hispaniae’) in making war against an unnamed ‘sultan’ (‘soldanum’) and defeated him. However, in the immediate aftermath of this victory, another ‘sultan’ ambushed Douglas and his men, who had been left isolated from their Castilian allies by their earlier success. This broadly fits with the notion that Douglas et al. participated in the initial rout of the Nasrid forces by the river, only to be overwhelmed by the counterattack before additional forces from Alfonso’s main force could come to their rescue.
Cameron’s interpretation also fits with the accounts of Le Bel and Barbour. Both writers have Douglas and his fellow Scots fighting separately from King Alfonso. Le Bel has Douglas positioned ‘on the flank’ (‘des costez’) while Barbour places him in command of the ‘vanguard’ (‘avaward’). While Barbour’s claim that Douglas led the vanguard is doubtful, the notion that he served in it is believable enough. The vanguard was the first division of the army to join the fighting, which in the case of Teba would place Douglas et al. in the force initially sent to reclaim the area beside the river, as Cameron argues. Le Bel reports that Douglas and co. attacked too fiercely, becoming isolated from the rest of the crusading force when it turned out that the Castilians were not yet ready to engage the enemy. As noted above, Le Bel was somewhat hostile towards the Scots, having served as a mercenary against a Scottish army (which included Douglas) in 1327. He therefore likely intends his audience to view Douglas’s ferocity as rashness. Later in his text, he even goes so far as to refer to pro-Bruce guerrillas as ‘wild Scots’ (‘Escots sauvages’)!
Barbour too has Douglas becoming a victim of his own success. The poet claims that, having become isolated from the rest of the army after forcing their foes to flee, Douglas and his men were prudently seeking to disengage from the fighting and regroup with King Alfonso’s main force - 'Towart hys ost than turnyt he'. However, one of their number – Sir William Sinclair – ‘With a gret rout enveround was’ (i.e., became surrounded by many enemy soldiers). Rather than leave him to his fate, Douglas leads his fellow Scots back into the fray despite being outnumbered ‘twenty ner for ane’, and they are all killed. Barbour does not share Le Bel’s critical attitude towards Douglas’s actions. Indeed, he laments that even Douglas’s ‘worschip’ (a term the poet elsewhere defines as the prudent combination of boldness and intelligence) was not enough to overcome the sheer numbers arrayed against him.
Narratives of Douglas’s death only grew more dramatic in the centuries that followed. Writing in the 1440s, the poet Richard Holland, who served as secretary to Douglas’s great-grandson Archibald Douglas, earl of Moray, adds further dramatic tension to the incident by claiming that before returning to rescue his countryman, Douglas flung the casket containing the king’s heart deep into the throng of enemy troops, saying:
Wend on as thou was wont
Throw the batell in bront,
Ay formast in the front
Thy fays amang!
And I sall followe the in faith, or feye to be fellit.
As thi legeman leile, my lyking thow art.
R. Holland, The Buke of the Howlat, ll. 491-6
Holland insists that Douglas did this ahead of every engagement he fought while on crusade, of which he suggests there were many, so it would be obtuse to suppose that Holland did not intend his readers to believe the same speech preceded the engagement in which Douglas was killed. Sir Walter Scott, whose narrative of Douglas’s death largely follows Barbour’s, paraphrases Holland’s reported speech in his ‘Tales of a Grandfather’, published in 1827: “Pass first in fight,” he said, “as thou wert wont to do, and Douglas will follow thee, or die.”
In the aftermath of the battle, Douglas’s body and Bruce’s heart were recovered from the field, and Douglas’s remains were boiled to leave only the bones for transport back to Scotland. Sir William Keith of Galston had survived the battle, having previously broken his arm and thus not been present on the battlefield. Keith thus accompanied Douglas’s bones and Bruce’s heart back to Scotland, the former being interred at St Bride’s Kirk in Douglasdale. Bruce’s heart meanwhile was buried at Melrose Abbey, reinforcing the late king’s connections to his hero David I (Melrose had been founded by David in the twelfth-century) while also sending a powerful message to future generations about his expectations concerning the stability of the border he had fought so hard to restore.
