The “Fyre of Ire Kyndild” in the Fifteenth-Century Scottish Marches 1

This chapter examines vengeance and its quenching in a dispute which, in part, stretched across the international boundary between two late medieval “states” on the periphery of Europe. It offers a glimpse, rare in the evidence surviving from late medieval Scotland, of the role of emotion and honor in such violent disputing. The case is also extraordinarily well-documented, thanks in part to the survival of evidence for multiple attempts at resolution. the dispute is representative of patterns of local conflict in the Scottish marches, and it speaks to the central importance of the desire for vengeance in the prosecution of lethal disputes. The Coldingham conflict took place in the wider context of Scottish politics, and a quick survey of these figures and events will assist in the following analysis. By contrast, an effective compromise made peace by building new, positive relationships, transforming the structures which generated conflict.