Thomas in History

One of the first things I found out about Thomas is that he was an actual person, not just a folkloric figure. He was probably born sometime between 1210 and 1220, and died sometime between 1290 and 1300.

In the manner of modern history, there's not much to say definitively about him from sources in his lifetime. A 1294 document has him (or possibly his son if he had one) making his lands in Earlston over to a religious establishment called Trinity House of Soltra. Apart from this, nix - but that's not unusual for Scottish history of that period. One story goes that after Edward I's invasion of Scotland in 1296, like a good Norman bureaucrat he packaged up the records of the nation and put them on a ship for London. The ship sank on the way, taking the records of the Scottish kingdom to the bottom of the ocean. True, or another piece of Scottish folklore?

Anyway there's a few things we can know about Thomas with more or less certainty.

1. He lived in a town called Erceldoune (modern day Earlston) in the Scottish border region. This town apparently included a castle owned by the Earls of Dunbar and the residents would have owed some kind of allegiance to that nobleman, probably being mostly his tenants. The fact that Thomas made his land over to someone indicates that he owned it, rather than leasing it, but he still would have had some obligation to the local lord.
2. He is known as Thomas Rhymour. There is some speculation that this is a family name, but his reputation as a poet makes it more likely that this was a title or nickname. Later sources call him Thomas Learmont, but this name does not appear before the 16th century. He has been identified (with varying degrees of certainty) as the author of a version of Tristan and Isolde, of the original version of the ballad which bears his name, and of various prophecies and sayings. All or none of these may be his own work, but it is hardly likely that he would have had works attributed to him if he were not a poet - the reputation must have come from somewhere.
3. More dubiously he is associated in later chronicles with various significant events. One story recounted by Blind Harry, author of the voluminous life of William Wallace, has him uttering a favourable prophecy about Wallace after rumours of his death cirulate. Another has him cryptically foreshadowing the death of King Alexander III in 1286, which precipitated two decades of dynastic crisis and war with England.

That's about it for certain or uncertain historical references, but it's enough. I'll come back to some of those stories and references in more detail in later posts. For now its enough to place him in a golden age of medieval Scotland. His life spans the reigns of three kings who went under the name Alexander. For most of that time Scotland was at peace, dynastic succession was relatively smooth even when the kings were still minors on the ascension. Occasional bad years aside, agricultural production increased, people had enough to eat, and Scotland did a lively trade in wool and fish with England and France. The Crusades continued through most of his lifetime, but although Scottish soldiers would have fought, these battles were far away and made slight impact.
The Scottish kings were even confident enough to try to expand their territory although with limited success. In 1232 Alexander I laid claim to the north of England, although he ended up settling for a border that ran along the Tweed and Solway. Alexander II launched a campaign to end Norwegian rule in the Western Isles, finally completed in 1263 when the Scottish under Alexander III won the rather farcical Battle of Largs.
This peace and confidence, however, collapsed rapidly after Alexander III's sudden death in 1286. Both his sons had died already and his infant grandaughter died on the way from Norway to be crowned queen. In the absence of any clear heir, the Scottish nobles invited Edward I of England to adjudicate on the succession, and he arrived with a large troop of soldiers who somehow never went home after John Balliol was named king. There followed over 20 years of war, with Edward's invasion of 1296, Wallace's revolt and ongoing guerilla campaign up to his death in 1305, and finally the war of independence that led to Robert Bruce's ascension in 1314.
Thomas certainly lived long enough to see the beginnings of this trouble, and may have died (or returned to elf-land if your prefer) sometime between 1297 and 1300, while Edward was establishing his dominance over Scotland with more or less brutality, depending on which sources you believe. He did not live to see Robert Bruce's triumph - but perhaps he predicted it?