A history of England

by Charles Oman

Edward in Scotland.—Battle of Falkirk.

It was not till 1298 that Edward returned to England, and took in hand the suppression of the rebellion. He crossed the border with the whole feudal levy of England, twenty thousand bowmen, and a great horde of Welsh light infantry; soon he was joined by many Scots of the English faction. Wallace burnt the Lothians behind him, and retired northward for some time without fighting. Edward's great host was almost forced to retire for want of provisions, but when the news was brought him that Wallace had pitched his camp at Falkirk, he pressed on to bring the Scots to action. He found them drawn up behind a morass, formed in four great clumps of pikemen, with archers in the intervals, and a few cavalry in the reserve. The first charge of the English horse was checked by the bog; the second was beaten back by the steady infantry of the Scots. Then Edward brought forward his archers, and bade them riddle the heavy masses of the enemy with ceaseless arrow-flights, till a gap was made. Then the English horse charged again; the Scottish knights in reserve fled without attempting to save the day, and the greater part of the squares of pikemen were ridden down and cut to pieces. Wallace fled to the hills, and the English cruelly ravaged all the Lowlands. But the Scots did not yet submit; the barons deposed Wallace, of whom they had always been jealous, and named a regency to supersede him, under John Comyn, the nephew of their exiled king. The struggle lingered on for several years more, for Edward was hindered from completing his work by the continual pressure of the French war. It was not till 1301-2 that he resumed and finished the conquest of the Lowlands. But in 1303 he was at length able to make a definitive peace with Philip IV., who restored to him all the lost fortresses of Guienne. Free at last from his continental troubles, Edward swept over Scotland from end to end, carrying his arms into the north as far as Elgin and Banff. The regent Comyn and all the barons of the land submitted to him, and by the capture of Stirling in 1304 the last embers of resistance were quenched.

Subjection of Scotland.—Wallace executed.

Scotland was apparently crushed: the king reorganized the whole country, cutting it up into counties and sheriffdoms like England, providing for its representation in the English Parliament, and setting up new judges and governors throughout the land. The administration was, for the most part, left in the hands of Scots, though the king's nephew, John of Brittany, was appointed regent and warden of the land. The last hope of the survival of Scottish independence seemed to vanish in 1305, when Wallace, who had maintained himself as an outlaw in the hills long after the rest of his countrymen had submitted, fell into the hands of the English. He was betrayed by some of his own men to Sir John Menteith, one of Edward's Scottish officials. Menteith sent him to London, where he was executed as a traitor, with all the cruelties that were prescribed for men guilty of high treason. It would have been better for the king's good name if he—like so many other Scots—had been pardoned; but Edward could not forgive the prime mover of the insurrection, and the cruel waster of the English border.

Robert Bruce.—Murder of John Comyn.

For some two years Scotland was governed as part of Edward's realm, but the nation submitted from sheer necessity, not from any good will. In 1306 the troubles broke out again, owing to the ambition of a single man. Robert Bruce, the grandson of the Bruce who had striven with Balliol in 1292, was the leader in the new rising. Like his grandfather, he was more of an English baron than a pure Scot. He had taken Edward's side in the civil wars, and seems to have hoped that his fidelity might be rewarded by the gift of the Scottish crown when the Balliols were finally dismissed. Receiving no such guerdon, he conspired with some of his kinsfolk and a few of the Scottish earls, and endeavoured to get John Comyn, the late regent of Scotland, to join him. But when Comyn refused—at an interview in the Greyfriars Kirk at Dumfries—to break his newly sworn faith to King Edward, Bruce slew him with his own hand before the altar, and fled to the north. There was method in this murder, for, after the Balliols, Comyn had the best hereditary claim to the Scottish throne. [18]

Severity of Edward.

Gathering his followers at Scone, Bruce had himself crowned King of Scotland. But his royalty was of the most ephemeral nature; few of the Scots would join one whose past record was so unsatisfactory, and his army was beaten and dispersed by de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, whom King Edward sent against him. Bruce had to take to the hills almost alone, and for many months was chased about the woods and lochs of Perthshire and Argyleshire by Highland chiefs eager to earn the price that Edward had set upon his head. His kinsmen, Nigel, Alexander, and Thomas, with most of his chief followers, were captured, tried and executed, for Edward was driven to wild anger by the unprovoked rising of one who had hitherto been his hot partisan. Even the ladies of Bruce's house were cast into dungeons, and the Countess of Buchan, who had crowned him at Scone, was shut up in an iron cage. The king's hand fell far more heavily on Scotland than before: the lands of Bruce's partisans were confiscated and given to Englishmen, and all who had favoured him were slain or outlawed.

Death of Edward.