The Harrying of Buchan, 1308: The Destruction of Comyn Power

What it was

Straight after his victory at Barra, Robert Bruce ordered the deliberate, systematic devastation of the Comyn earldom of Buchan — the Herschip (“harrying”) of Buchan. He sent his brother Edward Bruce to “lay waste the Earldom of Buchan from end to end,” destroying the Comyns’ capacity to resist. For months his men burned farms and homesteads, drove off or killed the livestock, destroyed the grain, and killed Comyn supporters who stood against them. Strongholds such as Slains, Rattray and Dundarg were reduced, and the English-held castles of Fyvie and Aberdeen taken.

Its brutality — and its purpose

This was calculated political terror, aimed at annihilating the Comyn power base so it could never rise again. It worked. The devastation was so severe that, by the chronicle tradition, it was still spoken of in living memory fifty years later.

Consequences

The Comyn earldom of Buchan was forfeited to the Crown and its lands handed to Bruce’s allies — the Hays, the Keiths and the Douglases. The earl died in England in 1308. Together with the loss of the Badenoch lands after Bannockburn (1314), the Harrying ended the Comyns as a national power in Scotland — a fall from the very top of the realm to a scattered name in barely a decade. Their story continues, quietly, on the Clan Cumming page.

The clans & people involved

• Clan Cumming — the earldom of Buchan, destroyed.
• Robert & Edward Bruce — who ordered and led it.
• Clan Douglas — among those granted the forfeited Comyn lands.

What survives today

The Harrying was not a single battle but a campaign of destruction across a whole district, so there is no one field to visit — the memorial is the landscape of Buchan itself, in the north-east corner of Aberdeenshire. What you can still see are the ruined Comyn strongholds: the cliff-top ruins by Slains, the fragment of Dundarg on its headland, and — still standing and grand, though much rebuilt — Fyvie Castle, at the end of the Barra pursuit. The devastation left few monuments, but the chroniclers say it was remembered in these parts for fifty years.

Sources

• Harrying of Buchan — Wikipedia; John Comyn, Earl of Buchan.