SCOTTISH INVASIONS
1018-1424
Shakespeare in ‘King Henry V.’ puts into the King’s mouth the following
lines:
‘For you shall read that my great-grandfather
Never went with his forces into France,
But that the Scot on his unfurnish’d kingdom
Came pouring like the tide into a breach.’
And the words express sufficiently well the popular opinion of Scotland
as the especial and persevering enemy of England. Like a good many
popular opinions, it is only partly true. Yet it has a foundation of
fact, in so far that for some three centuries England and Scotland were
generally at war. Still, this condition of chronic hostility was not
reached until the reign of Edward I., and before then the two countries
had no more than the amount of warfare that might have been expected of
two adjacent and warlike peoples.
It has already been noticed that Constantine III.’s vague
acknowledgment of English suzerainty had had less success from the
political point of view than he had hoped for, and that his attempt
to unite the disaffected sections of the English Empire had met with
crushing disaster. The old King, bereaved and broken-hearted, withdrew
to ‘his northland,’ and for many years the Scottish kingdom, slowly
growing together out of its discordant elements of Scots, Picts, and
Strathclyde Britons, was content to remain a sort of appendage of its
powerful neighbour.
But with the break-up of the English Empire in the beginning of the
eleventh century, the unsubstantial allegiance of Scotland grew more
than ever shadowy. In 1018 occurred an event which had consequences
of profound importance. England had just come under the rule of Cnut.
Deira was governed by Eric Haakonson, but the Bernicians held out
against him under Eardwulf ‘Cudel.’ Malcolm II. of Scotland, a vigorous
ruler, saw his chance. He had long coveted Lothian, and had made
various futile attacks upon it. In 1006 he had pushed southward as far
as Durham, and had there been defeated by Earl Uhtred. But this time he
was more fortunate. Eardwulf, attacked by Eric, had more upon his hands
than he could cope with, when Malcolm with his vassal, Eugenius of
Strathclyde, invaded Bernicia. He overran Lothian without assistance,
and at Carham, on the Tweed, gained a crushing victory over the weak
Bernician host, almost exterminating it. The result of the victory was
the permanent union of Lothian to Scotland. To Cnut it was a matter of
small importance; probably he regarded it as better that Lothian should
belong to the apparently loyal Scot than the rebellious Eardwulf. In
1027 Malcolm paid a formal homage to the Emperor of the North. But the
Lothians and the Merse became an integral part of Scotland, and their
sturdy Teutonic population proved the nucleus about which the inchoate
and distracted realm eventually solidified into a single state.
It is almost unnecessary to say that, as soon as Cnut was in his grave,
Malcolm’s successor Duncan threw off his allegiance. In 1040 he invaded
Bernicia. The line of the Tyne was as yet undefended, and he pressed on
to Dunholm (Durham), where the south Bernician levies had taken refuge.
Making a gallant sortie, they completely routed the disorderly swarm of
Picts, Scots, and Britons, and celebrated their victory by raising a
bloody trophy of severed heads.
Duncan’s prestige as successor of the conqueror Malcolm II. was
shattered by this defeat, and he was at once involved in war with his
many unruly vassals. Soon after the battle of Dunholm he was defeated,
and slain by his general Macbeth, ‘Mormaer’ (hereditary chief) of
Moray, who assumed the crown, and ruled very successfully for seventeen
years. It was not until 1057 that he was slain in battle by Malcolm
‘Canmore,’ the son and heir of Duncan.
Malcolm early began to interfere in English affairs. He may be very
fairly compared to those early kings of Parthia, whose single object
was to add territory to their own narrow lands. Malcolm’s power,
however, was not equal to his energy and ambition. Like the kings
of Bulgaria in their relations with the Eastern Empire, he might
gain temporary successes, but in the end the victory inclined to the
larger and more powerful state; nor, despite the courage of her people
and their stubborn pride in their nationality, was Scotland ever a
dangerous rival. At her best she was a troublesome neighbour, and as
England naturally moved faster on the path of progress than her poor
and politically hampered foe, the chances were more and more against
the latter ever gaining a decisive success.
Scotland has been well served by her poets. The average Englishman
is generally serenely ignorant of the very names of his ancestors’
victories; while not merely Bannockburn, but a score of minor
matters--mostly mere Border skirmishes--are celebrated by Scott, and
referred to with pride. This radical difference between the standpoints
of the two nations can hardly be ignored.
The hope of making further acquisitions of Northumbrian territory was
undoubtedly the main motive of Scots kings for two centuries after
Carham. Malcolm III. made a raid on Northumberland in 1061, but the
savagery of his followers can hardly have helped his cause. Later he is
found in alliance with Tosti, the rebellious brother of Harold II.
Malcolm’s hopes were rudely checked by the events of 1066. William’s
introduction of a highly centralized rule ensured that for the future
Northumbria would not be left to fight her own battles unaided, or, at
least, unavenged. Yet for a time Malcolm’s marriage to Margaret, sister
of Eadgar the Aetheling, and the considerable immigration into Scotland
of fugitive Englishmen, seemed to promise otherwise. Cumberland, it
must be remembered, was at present a part of Scotland, having been
granted by Eadmund I., after his conquest of it, as a fief to Malcolm
I., and Carlisle was an excellent base of operations. In 1070 Malcolm,
starting thence, made another savage raid into Northumberland. William
thereupon proceeded northward next year, with a great army and a fleet,
and penetrated to the Tay. Malcolm made a vague submission, but in
1079, during William’s absence in Normandy, he made a third raid, which
was replied to by a counter raid under Prince Robert. A fortress was
then constructed on the Tyne to defend southern Bernicia, called the
‘New Castle.’ The result was immediate. Malcolm made no further attack
for twelve years, and was then checked by the garrison of Newcastle.
He made some kind of submission, but Cumberland was conquered by a
treacherous attack of William Rufus, and the English king’s insults
drove him to madness. He once more invaded Northumberland, and near
Alnwick was defeated and slain.
For many years after the famous king’s death there were no Scottish
invasions. Scotland was much troubled with civil war, and afterwards
divided between two sons of Malcolm. It was not until 1124 that David
I. reunited the country under his rule. For eleven years his relations
with England were peaceful, but when Stephen of Blois usurped the
English throne, the Scottish king invaded Northumberland, nominally
to support his niece, the Empress Matilda, really, of course, to make
his profit out of the situation. Northumberland and Durham readily
submitted to him as the representative of Matilda, and Stephen, pressed
by many difficulties, was glad to purchase his withdrawal by the
retrocession of Carlisle, nominally to David’s son Henry, who also
received Doncaster and the Earldom of Huntingdon. But the great English
magnates were bitterly indignant, and in 1138 war again broke out.
David invaded Northumberland at the very beginning of the year.
Already castles were arising, and he failed to take Wark, but wasted
the open country, his hordes of wild mountaineers committing terrible
atrocities. Stephen hastened northward, and David retreated; but the
English king, with rebellion in the south, could only waste Lothian
and withdraw. David thereupon reassembled his forces and again
advanced. Norham Castle was taken, Wark again besieged, the levies of
Lancashire defeated by the King’s nephew William at Clitheroe, and the
Scottish host poured over Tees into Yorkshire. There it encountered
solid resistance. Its barbarities had exasperated the country-folk,
and they rallied _en masse_ to oppose the invaders. The nominal
commander-in-chief was the young William of Albemarle, but Thurstan,
Archbishop of York, and Sir Walter Espec, the High Sheriff, were the
real leaders.
The men of Yorkshire, with reinforcements from Durham, Derby, and
Nottingham, assembled at Northallerton, and took up a position on
Cowton Moor some distance to the northward. On August 22 they were
attacked by the Scots.
David had with him a heterogeneous host from all parts of his
dominions--said, with considerable probability, to have been 26,000
strong. But it was very unstable. The Picts of Alban were jealous
of the ‘Saxons’ of Lothian, and neither were inclined to work well
with the Britons of Strathclyde. The Niduarian Picts of Galloway were
uncontrollable, and all the old elements of the realm disliked the new
Norman-Teutonic immigrants, although their small force of about 500
mailed horsemen was to show itself the one thoroughly reliable arm of
the host.
The English army was, without any doubt, greatly inferior in number,
as is shown by the fact that it maintained a passive defensive--the
last plan of action likely to be adopted by the fiery Norman-English
knights unless there had been compelling reason for it. The bulk of
the force consisted of the country levies, but the whole knighthood of
Yorkshire were there, and there was a strong contingent of archers.
Albemarle and Espec formed their army into one solid mass, probably
with the mail-clad knights and their followers dismounted as a front
rank. In the centre of the line was a waggon with a tall mast stepped
in it, from which flew the sacred banners of St. Peter of York, St.
Cuthbert of Durham, St. Wilfrid of Ripon, and St. John of Beverley; and
beneath their shadow old Walter Espec and Albemarle took their stand,
with a band of chosen warriors as a guard. The horses were sent to the
rear, and the barons and knights promised to stand and die with the
country-folk.
There was a hot and unfriendly debate in the Scottish host, which
shows how incoherent it was. David, according to Aelred of Rievaulx,
had intended to attack in one huge column, with the mailed cavalry in
front; but the Picts violently objected. Malise, Earl of Strathearn,
declared that the ‘Saxons’ were no better than cowards, and that he
himself, though he wore no mail, would outstrip the best of them in the
charge. Alan Percy hotly replied, and the King was obliged to part the
two. The Galwegians, who had distinguished themselves at Clitheroe,
were equally furious and insubordinate, and eventually David had to
consent to deliver his attack in territorial divisions. On the right,
under the King’s gallant son Henry, were the Strathclydians with two
hundred knights at their head. On the left were the men of Lothian,
with some Argyll and Isles men; and in the centre, in advance of the
wings, were the Galwegians with, probably, other Pictish contingents.
Behind the centre King David led a reserve consisting of the men of
Moray and other Highland regions, with all the knights not on the wings.
As the Scottish masses moved forward they were assailed with showers
of arrows, and the wild Galwegians raced to handgrips just as, for
centuries thereafter, the Highland clans were to charge, brandishing
their swords and yelling ‘Albanach! Albanach!’ as they dashed through
the deadly hail. The English line gave back for a moment before the
impact of the rush, but rallied at once and stood firm--a wall of steel
upon which the Celtic billows beat fiercely, but without avail. On
the left the men of Lothian and Lorn did badly. They had never agreed
together. Perhaps the Lowlanders had little heart in the fight against
their Northumbrian kinsmen. Their leader was killed in the advance, and
the whole wing gave back after the first charge, taking no further part
in the battle.
On the Scottish right matters went differently. The Strathclydians
charged gallantly, and the knights in front burst right through the
English line, penetrating to the baggage and horses in the rear. But
so fine was the spirit of the Yorkshire men, that they rallied and
re-formed in the very face of the enemy, and cut off the Strathclydian
infantry from Henry’s squadron. The fight raged fiercely along the
line, the Scots rallying again and again, and hurling themselves in
repeated charges against the close English ranks. The hardest and
best fighting seems to have been done by the Galwegians in the centre.
They held on to the English line for two hours, and made three furious
assaults. Not until the third had been repelled, and their chiefs
Donald and Ulgarich slain, did they sullenly give back, many of them,
as Aelred says, ‘looking like hedgehogs with the arrows sticking in
them.’ The Strathclyde men also were in retreat, and Prince Henry,
cut off with the remnant of his gallant band, was vainly endeavouring
to rejoin the main body. The King’s reserve was demoralized by the
sight of the retreat of the left and the repeated repulse of the
Picts and Strathclydians, refused to advance, and broke up. David was
left among his dissolving host with only his few hundred horsemen. He
fell back some way, and raised his banner on a hill. Around it the
ruins of the right and centre, with the disgraced left and reserve,
gradually rallied, unmolested by the English, who knew that only half
the Scottish host had been seriously engaged, and were unaware of
the dissensions that had rendered it ineffective. Then David began
his retreat to Carlisle, cautiously pursued by Espec and Albemarle.
At Carlisle Prince Henry at last rejoined, having given away his
encumbering mail to a peasant, and with only nineteen of his two
hundred horsemen still with him.
The result of the ‘Battle of the Standards’ was highly honourable
to the English Northerners, but it is easy to see that the hopeless
lack of cordial co-operation between the various sections of the
Scottish host ensured its defeat. In a modified form this want of
cohesion continued to the last to affect the efficiency of Scottish
armies of invasion. David continued to fish in the agitated waters of
English politics, and during his reign retained practical possession
of Northumberland and Durham, save for a few castles; but he made no
more invasions in force, and after his death Henry II. recovered the
northern counties.
The invasion of William the Lion, in 1174, was made ostensibly to
aid the rebellious sons of Henry II. against their father. William’s
true object was, no doubt, to recover the border counties. Perhaps
no invasion of England has ever appeared so threatening, and proved
so completely ‘the fleeting shadow of a dream.’ William’s army was
large--perhaps the largest that a Scots king had hitherto gathered--but
he could not control his wild followers. His advance was marked by
ravage and destruction--peculiarly stupid in view of the fact that he
hoped to annex the country which he was ruining. Several fortresses
were captured, and in July he besieged Alnwick. He kept only a very
small force about him, and allowed the main portion of his probably
unruly host to spread over the country for purpose of pillage. The
consequences of the dispersion were disastrous. The troops of the North
had already assembled under Robert d’Estuteville, Sheriff of Yorkshire,
and were marching against the invaders. A body of some four hundred
horsemen was scouting ahead of the main body, and so hopelessly were
the Scots scattered that they passed, apparently unchallenged, through
the enemy’s line into his rear. Before the walls of Alnwick they saw
a small body of about a hundred horsemen engaged in exercising and
tilting. They can hardly have expected that they would be so rash as to
charge their own superior numbers. Yet so it was. Practically the whole
of the tilting band were taken, and the astonishment of the victors may
be imagined when they found that they had captured the King of Scots.
The Scottish army melted away across the Border. The King paid dearly
for his recklessness. He was forced to become Henry’s vassal, and so
remained until the death of the Angevin king. Richard I. very wisely
freed him from this humiliation in return for a money payment, but
there were no more Scottish invasions of England for many years. The
Scottish kings never gave up their hopes of gaining Northumberland, and
more than once hostilities appeared to threaten; but on the whole the
relations between the two countries were peaceful, and when Alexander
III. died in 1286 there had been no real outbreak of war for a century.
This peaceful period came to an end when Edward I. made his attempt to
unite the two countries. That his aim was wise and statesmanlike is not
to be doubted. There was no strong dividing line between the great mass
of the English nation and the Scots Lowlanders, who, for all practical
purposes, formed one race. The two countries had been in close and
generally peaceful connection for over a century; the estates of many
of the magnates lay on both sides of the Border. On the subject of the
repeated ‘commendations’ of the Scottish kings to those of England,
opinion will always be divided; but to Edward’s legal mind they must
have appeared to constitute a strong body of precedents. Nor does it,
on the whole, appear that there was at first any great disinclination
to the union among the Scots. It was Edward’s highhandedness, and the
blundering violence of his officials, who were foolish enough to treat
the country like a conquered land, that slowly roused the pride and
courage of the Scots.
In 1297 Scotland was in full revolt under William Wallace, and after
his famous victory at Cambuskenneth he invaded northern England while
Edward was absent in France. For some three months the Scots ranged
over the English Border counties. Newcastle and Carlisle successfully
held out, but the open country was swept bare. The chronicler
Hemingburgh accuses the Scots of committing unmentionable atrocities,
but practically admits that Wallace was not to blame for them, being
unable to control his followers. There exists a letter of protection
granted by him and his colleagues to Hexham Abbey, and doubtless there
were others. Still, great barbarities appear to have been perpetrated,
and it was largely owing to them that Edward conceived his furious
animosity against the Scottish patriot.
In the stress of their struggle for independence with Edward I. the
Scots contrived to make a raid on Cumberland in 1299, but by 1305 the
country was at the feet of the English king. Not until Robert Bruce had
taken the lead in Scotland, and the worthless Edward II. had succeeded
his great father, were the northern borders again troubled. In 1310,
and again in 1311, Robert raided Northumberland, and in 1313 he swept
through Cumberland, joined a fleet which he had sent from the Isles
and the Clyde, and annexed the Norse principality of Man. In 1314 he
gained the supreme victory of Bannockburn. The independence of Scotland
appeared assured and the way open for invasions of England.
Between 1314 to 1323 the Scots invaded England repeatedly. All their
operations were of a guerrilla type, and rarely appear to have aimed
at more than the devastation of the country-side. Robert, himself one
of the ablest generals of mediæval days, had no illusions as to the
ability of Scotland to cope single-handed with her strong antagonist,
and his famous testamentary counsel to always avoid action and to
endeavour to starve invaders out of the country is well known.
The armies which carried out the invasions of England during this
heyday of Scotland’s renown were well adapted for their purpose. They
included a force of mail-clad men-at-arms strong enough to overcome any
local resistance which might be offered, and a much larger contingent
of light-armed men mounted on rough, hardy, country ponies. Each
man carried a bag of oatmeal on his horse, and an iron plate whereon
to bake it. Otherwise men and beasts lived on the country through
which they passed. The hardy, frugal Scots were quite at home in this
rough-and-ready campaigning, and for several years they rode at will
over northern England.
There is generally a lack of interest about the invasions themselves,
which all bore almost the same image and superscription. Once the
Border was crossed, the Scots rode far and wide over the northern
counties, ravaging, plundering, or ransoming villages, towns, and
castles, much as the Vikings had done four centuries before. There was
little fighting as a rule. England was at war with herself. And when
once or twice English armies did assemble, the Scots simply avoided an
action until they were starved into dispersion.
In 1314 Edward Bruce and the ‘Good Lord’ James Douglas wasted the
English Border. In 1315 Bruce himself attacked Carlisle, but it
repulsed him. For the next two years the main energy of Scotland was
devoted to Edward Bruce’s attempted conquest of Ireland, but Douglas
was busy on the Border; and such was the dread of him in the North that
his name was used to frighten disobedient children, and the humiliation
of the times is depicted in the lullaby:
‘Hush thee, baby, do not fret thee;
The Black Douglas shall not get thee!’
In 1318 Berwick was taken, and a large English army was driven in
ruinous retreat from an attempted counter-invasion of Scotland in
the following year. In 1320 the best of Robert’s captains, the famous
Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray, assisted by Douglas, retaliated.
They pressed on across Northumberland and Durham into Yorkshire, and
at Myton-on-Swale encountered the local levies under the Archbishop
of York. Perhaps the Primate hoped to repeat the famous day of the
‘Standards.’ But the results were far otherwise. The Yorkshiremen were
totally routed; 3,000 men were slain and so many of the ecclesiastics,
who were present to encourage the peasants, that the fray was called
‘Myton Chapter’ by the victors.
The result was that King Robert planned a campaign in 1322, which
should be more than a mere marauding expedition. The English obtained
intelligence, and Edward II. collected a large army at Newcastle. The
Scottish king, therefore, stood on the defensive in Lothian, while
a strong detachment crossed the western border and penetrated into
mid-Lancashire. Edward found Lothian desolate, and effected nothing but
the destruction of some abbeys--notably those of Melrose and Dryburgh.
Bruce declined to fight, and the English army, perishing from famine
and disease, melted away over the Border. So ruined were the northern
counties of England that Edward could not halt until he reached Byland
Abbey in Yorkshire. There so much as remained of the dissolving host
lay in security, when, on October 14, like a bolt from the blue, the
royal army of Scotland was upon them!
When the English army broke up, Bruce had followed from across the
Forth, and had passed through Northumberland, Durham, and Yorkshire so
swiftly that no tidings of his march seem to have reached the astounded
English. Early on October 14 the Scots fell upon the scattered English
divisions. There was little effective resistance; a connected line of
battle was never indeed formed. Edward fled in haste, abandoning his
baggage and military chest. A part of his army attempted to make a
stand at a good position in the rear of their cantonments. Douglas,
whose division was leading the pursuit, attacked in front, assisted by
Moray, who hurried in advance of his troops to serve under ‘Good Lord
James.’ For a time the English held their own, but when the Highlanders
arrived on the field the end came swiftly. The barefooted mountaineers
scrambled up the crags which covered the English wings, and charged in
flank and rear. The English fled in panic-stricken rout, and Walter the
Steward took up the pursuit, chasing the fugitives to the gates of York.
On May 30, 1323, Edward at last bowed his pride to calling a truce. It
was time, for the suffering North was already making terms of its own
with King Robert. The truce was ill-kept, and in 1327 broken by the
Scots. This was a diplomatic blunder on the part of King Robert; but
the disorder in England at the deposition of the witless Edward II.
was so great that he can hardly be blamed for seizing the opportunity.
He himself was already dying, but Moray and Douglas led the army across
the Border on this last great successful Scottish invasion of England.
Its strength is stated at 24,000 men, but it was probably less. The
English Regency assembled a strong force at York under the nominal
command of the boy-King Edward III., but its operations were utterly
futile. It literally lost its way in the Border wilderness, and only
ascertained the whereabouts of the Scots from a released prisoner,
Thomas of Rokeby. Even then the Scottish position was found too strong
to be assailed, and though Douglas would have accepted young Edward’s
proposal--fantastic, but quite in the spirit of the times--to withdraw
far enough to allow him to form order of battle, the able and prudent
Moray rightly refused to listen. For fifteen days the armies confronted
each other, the English suffering far more than their foes; and then
Moray quietly retreated under cover of a daring night surprise of the
English camp executed by Douglas. Three hundred men were killed, and
Edward’s tent was almost cut down over his head before the bold warrior
was obliged to retire. The supplies left behind by the Scots saved the
English from immediate starvation, and that was all. The expense of the
armament had, for the moment, exhausted England, and by the ‘Shameful
Treaty’ of Northampton, April 24, 1328, the independence of Scotland
was formally recognized.
From the high position to which she had been raised by Robert I.
Scotland fell fast. The anarchy which followed his death bade fair to
undo his life-work. Edward III. of England assisted Edward Balliol, son
of the ill-omened John, to attack Scotland, and himself made repeated
attempts to destroy her newly-gained independence. In these he was
baffled, but numerous strong places on the Border remained in English
hands. The need of an ally against England drove Scotland into the
arms of France, and the country became little better than an appendage
of the Continental Power. The ill effects of this are to be traced in
Scottish history for two centuries.
In 1346 King David II., the weak successor of his great father,
determined to invade England as a diversion in favour of France. Edward
III. was besieging Calais, and David appears to have been certain of
success. His army is said to have included 2,000 men-at-arms, 20,000
light cavalry, and 10,000 infantry. He invaded England by the Western
Marches, and sacked Lanercost Priory, a circumstance which evoked
bitter denunciations of him and his from the Lanercost Chronicle.
Moving on westward, David stormed the ‘Pyle’[F] of Liddell, hanging its
commander, Walter de Selby, and advanced to Bearpark, about six miles
from Bishop Auckland, where he encamped on October 16.
[F] Obviously another rendering of the well-known term
‘Peel’--Border stronghold.
Meanwhile the levies of the North had gathered to oppose his farther
advance. Edward’s youthful son, Lionel, was the nominal guardian of
the realm, but the real head of the government was Queen Philippa,
who herself was in the North to expedite measures of defence. Though
it is probably untrue that she accompanied the army to the field, it
is highly probable that she personally directed the levying of the
troops. By October 16 an army of some 10,000 men, under those barons
of the North who were in England, was collected in Bishop Auckland
Park. The Scots were quite unaware of its proximity, and a marauding
column, under Sir William Douglas, blundered into it on the evening of
the 16th, losing heavily before it could withdraw. David, young and
hot-blooded, at once resolved to attack, though his swarm of spearmen,
without archers, and weak in heavy cavalry, was at a great disadvantage
beside the English force.
On the morning of the 17th the English army was strongly posted on the
hills north of Bishop Auckland. The ground in its front was broken and
intersected by hedges. The Archbishop of York was on the field, and
the banners of the northern saints, suspended to a great cross, were
carried into action, as they had been at Northallerton two centuries
before. The centre was commanded by Ralph Neville, the right by Henry
Percy and the northern barons, the left, of Lancashire men, by Thomas
of Rokeby. The Scots advanced in three divisions, the centre under
the King, the right under the Earl of Moray, the left under Robert,
the High Steward of Scotland, afterwards the first Stuart King. From
the first everything went ill with the Scots. Entangled among the
enclosures and ditches, their heavy, cumbrous columns, as at Halidon
Hill, were tormented and disordered by a rain of arrows, to which they
could make no reply. Sir John Graham in vain charged with a body of
horsemen in the endeavour to ride down the bowmen. He and his band were
all shot down. Seeing the disorder among their adversaries, the English
army came on to a counter-attack, with the sacred banners waving in
their van. The Scots’ right, striving vainly to form in order amid the
hedges and obstacles, was charged by the men-at-arms, broken and driven
back in utter rout, with the loss of its leader; the Steward’s division
was forced away, and cut off from the King, and the whole English
force closed upon the centre. For some three hours the Scots fought
desperately, but their mass was finally pierced through and shattered,
and David himself wounded and taken prisoner by John of Coupland, a
Northumbrian squire.
Robert the Steward appears to have been accused of having made no
effort to save the King. David certainly seems to have suspected him;
but it must be said that had he brought up his division again, he would
probably have only added to the greatness of the disaster. He retreated
in tolerable order, drawing to him as many as possible of the survivors
from the other divisions, and the English were too weary to pursue.
With David were taken the Archbishop of St. Andrews and several nobles,
while the death-roll included more than thirty barons, including the
Lord Marischal Keith and the Constable Hay.
This great disaster brought about a cessation of Scottish invasions
for many years. David II. became more or less Anglicized during his
long residence in England, and Robert the Steward, both as regent and
monarch, was inclined to peace. The nobles, however, were warlike
and turbulent, and the people did not love England. Several Border
strongholds were still held by the English, and there was continuous
skirmishing on the frontier, which, however, rarely assumed the dignity
of national strife. The Black Death weakened both nations, and not
until 1377 was the war renewed in earnest. Berwick-on-Tweed was taken
and retaken. There was fighting on the sea, ending in the destruction
of the Scottish piratical fleet under Andrew Mercer by the London
merchant Philpot. The English invaded the Lothians more than once with
no permanent results.
In 1385 Jean de Vienne, Admiral of France, landed in Scotland with
2,000 men-at-arms, 50,000 francs of gold, and a large supply of arms
and armour. A great invasion of England was organized, and 30,000 men
under De Vienne, James, Earl of Douglas, and other lords, entered
Northumberland. So formidable did the invasion appear that the young
King Richard II. himself took the command against the Scots. To the
disgust of the French, the Scots retreated into Clydesdale, and, while
the English burned Edinburgh, Perth, and Dundee, made a retaliatory
raid into Cumberland. They did not agree well with their allies,
who, on their side, conceived a great dislike for the poverty of the
country, as well as for the keenness of the people in respect of
monetary transactions. They went home sulkily, De Vienne himself being
pledge that the cost of their maintenance should be paid by France.
Chance made the two nations allies, but the French themselves never
seem to have made a good impression in Scotland.
In 1388 the Scottish nobles arranged--behind the King’s back be it
noted--an attack on England to revenge the devastation of 1385. An
army, vaguely said to have been 40,000 strong, under Robert, Earl of
Fife, the second son of the King, invaded Cumberland, with the usual
negative result; while a body of about 5,000, under Douglas, crossed
the Tweed, and carried devastation to the gates of Durham. The Earl of
Northumberland and his son Henry, the celebrated ‘Hotspur,’ were driven
into Newcastle, and Douglas retired unmolested as far as Otterburn,
some twenty miles from the Border. Here he was overtaken by a force
under ‘Hotspur,’ and a furious engagement took place, which has been
celebrated by Froissart in prose and in the famous ballad of ‘Chevy
Chase.’ In the end the English were beaten off, and Percy and other
knights fell into the hands of the Scots, who, however, had to lament
the death of their leader.
In the following year Robert II. died. His feeble son John, ‘Robert
III.,’ was anxious to keep the peace with England, and in this was
backed by his brother and co-regent, Robert, Duke of Albany. In 1398
the heir-apparent, David, Duke of Rothesay, supplanted his uncle for
a while, and inaugurated a vigorous anti-English policy. He alienated
the powerful Earl of March by breaking off his betrothal to his
daughter, and March fled to England. Henry IV. was anxious for peace,
but the Scots appear to have been determined on war, and he made a
brief expedition into Scotland in 1399. In 1402, after much desultory
skirmishing, the Scots, taking advantage of Henry’s preoccupations,
invaded England with a considerable army under Murdoch, Earl of
Fife, son of Albany (who had overthrown and murdered Rothesay), and
Archibald, Earl of Douglas, grandson of the hero of Otterburn. They
advanced, ravaging in the usual manner, as far as the Tyne, and then
turned homeward, pursued by a force under ‘Hotspur’ and the fugitive
Earl of March. They were overtaken while encamped on Homildon, or
Humbledon, Hill, near Wooler. Percy and March, adopting tactics
curiously similar to those employed a century later almost at the
same spot by Surrey, moved round the Scots’ position, and, by placing
themselves on their line of retreat, forced them to abandon their booty
and disperse, or fight.
The battle presents few features of interest; it was a mere counterpart
in tactics of Halidon Hill and Neville’s Cross. The Scots were
tormented in the old fashion by the archers, and Fife and Douglas
failed to attempt the only possible, if forlorn, expedient to stay
them--a determined charge of cavalry. Seeing the increasing disorder,
Sir John Swinton, one of the bravest knights in the army, begged
permission to advance, though only with his following of 100 lances.
Sir Adam Gordon, his personal enemy, thereupon sought reconciliation
with him, and the erstwhile foes, embracing on the field, placed
themselves at the head of the band, which rode downhill among the
archers, and perished to the last man. Driven to desperation by the
murderous discharge, the Scottish masses at last lumbered clumsily down
the hill, only to be massacred by the pitiless arrow flight, until in
despair they broke and fled. The English men-at-arms hardly struck a
blow. Fife and Douglas were both taken; the latter had received five
wounds, and owed his life solely to his well-tempered armour.
Disastrous as Homildon had been, it cannot be said to have any decisive
effects. The old frontier strife went on unchecked. The Scots recovered
Jedburgh, one of the few posts still held by the English in 1409.
A great invasion, organized by Albany in 1416, ended in a fiasco;
and when James I. returned in 1424 from his captivity in England,
hostilities had almost died away. This was largely due to the fact
that several of the chief Scottish nobles, including Douglas, had gone
to fight in the service of France against England. The result was that
direct warfare on the Border tended to die out.