Robert Baston

Robert Baston (fl. 1300), was an English Carmelite friar and prior of the abbey of Scarborough. Early life Baston was born, according to Pitts, of an illustrious race, and not far from Nottingham, where Bale tells us he was buried. He seems to have acquired a great reputation in his own age for elegant verses. At Oxford, says Pitts, he was not unworthily crowned with laurel as a rhetorician and a poet. He is said to have been taken to Scotland by Edward I to sing his praises at the siege of Stirling (1304); and, according to Bale, he is Trivet's authority for his story of Edward's rash approach to the beleaguered garrison. But Trivet merely refers to a certain friar (religiosus quidam) as having related the incident. He is certain that he was taken on a similar errand by Edward II, when setting out on the expedition to relieve Stirling, that resulted in the Battle of Bannockburn. Coerced versification Scottish chroniclers gloat over the story of his capture by Robert the Bruce, and tell how this king forced his prisoner to sing the defeat of his own countrymen as the price of his freedom. Baston's verses on this occasion are rhymed hexameters, with the rhymes disposed very irregularly. One couplet, describing Robert Bruce before the engagement, may serve as an example:— Cernit, discernit acies pro Marte paratas; Tales mortales gentes censet superatas.