Siege was laid to Werk and Carlisle, whilst the main body of irregulars, according to the usual tactics of Scottish armies, was dispatched to lay waste the surrounding country. The Bishop of Durham appears to have secretly favoured the confederates, and the Scots were allowed a free passage through the lands of his diocese;[401] but their further progress was checked, before long, by tidings of the approach of a powerful force under the orders of Richard de Lucy, and Humphrey de Bohun, the Justiciary and Constable of England. Raising the siege of Carlisle, William retired across the borders, closely followed by de Lucy and de Bohun, who were beginning to retaliate upon the Lothians the ravages of the Scottish army in England, when the arrival of messengers from the south, brought the unwelcome intelligence of the landing of the Earl of Leicester on Michaelmas Day. Negotiations were hastily opened with the Scottish king, and so well did the English commanders succeed in concealing the real state of affairs, that they obtained a truce until the following January, and were thus enabled to lead back their army to oppose the Earl of Leicester, and to bend all their energies towards confronting the novel danger.[402]
During the whole of the ensuing winter the war was carried on in England without intermission, whilst, with the singular policy of the age, a truce existed in all other quarters; thus enabling the partizans of Henry, in his own kingdom, to unite their forces for the purpose of crushing the Earl of Leicester.[403] A. D. 1174. At the expiration of the truce in January, the payment of 300 marks, offered by the barons of Northumberland through the medium of the bishop of Durham, purchased from William a further cessation of hostilities until Easter; and when the term of this second truce had also expired, the armies of the allies[404] at length appeared in the field. Whilst Louis prosecuted the war in Normandy, and the Count of Flanders, with the younger Henry, meditated a descent upon England, William again crossed the Borders with an army, strengthened by a body of mercenaries from the Low Countries;[405] his brother David proceeding at once to the south, as the earl had been chosen to command the English confederates, now left without a head through the capture of the Earl of Leicester.[406]
Leaving a division of his army to blockade Carlisle, William led the main body into Northumberland. Brough and Appleby were captured without resistance, and the castles of Liddel, Warkworth, and Harbottle, fell, in succession, into the hands of the Scots, who then retraced their steps to Carlisle. A close blockade extorted a promise of surrender from the castellan, Robert de Vaux, if no relief arrived before Michaelmas; for his provisions were beginning to fail, and he suspected the townsmen—attached, probably, to the memory of David, who had often made Carlisle his residence—of a favourable inclination towards the Scots. William then marched to invest Prudhoe Castle, upon the southern bank of the Tyne, where he was joined by Robert de Mowbray, the youngest of the victors of Northallerton, who, sorely pressed by the warlike bishop of Lincoln, eagerly advocated the advance of the Scots into Yorkshire, before the fall of his last castle of Thirsk, placing his eldest son in the hands of William as a hostage for the sincerity of his request. William promised to march to his assistance, but, warned of the approach of the Yorkshire barons, he relinquished his intention of relieving Thirsk, and, raising the siege of Prudhoe Castle, commenced his retreat towards the north.[407]
As he approached his own frontiers, the king dispatched the greater part of his army, under the command of Duncan, Earl of Fife, with instructions to disperse his forces over the face of the country, and carry out the usual tactics of Scottish warfare. In order to extend the circuit of his operations, Earl Duncan subdivided the forces committed to his charge, entrusting two separate divisions to Richard de Moreville and the Earl of Angus; whilst with the main body under his immediate command he entered Warkworth upon the morning of Saturday, the 13th of July; and the inhabitants of that place, no longer protected by the garrison of the castle, fell an easy prey to his followers. The town was burnt to the ground, and more than a hundred miserable beings, who, in the vain hope of safety, had fled to the Church of St. Lawrence, were torn from its sacred precincts and massacred with remorseless cruelty. Little did Earl Duncan imagine, as he contemplated the ruins of the burning church, that within a few short miles the fate of Scotland was trembling in the balance.[408]
Upon reaching Newcastle, late on the evening of the 12th of July, the Yorkshire Barons, so often destined to render good service to England, found that the Scottish army had retreated; when a difference of opinion arose as to the expediency of a further pursuit. Several of their number urged that they had already done enough in frustrating the intentions of the enemy against their own neighbourhood, and that it would be merely courting unnecessary danger to pursue eight thousand armed men with only four hundred horsemen. But there were others amongst their ranks who argued that much might be done by a compact and well-equipped body of knights, whilst the Scottish army was dispersed over the country, and whilst William was still in ignorance of their approach; and by the arguments and the authority of those who were in favour of an advance, the hesitation of the dissentients was at length overcome, and the bolder counsels prevailed.[409]
At earliest dawn upon the 13th, the Barons set out from Newcastle. A dense fog overhung the country, appearing to increase as they advanced northwards; and it was still early, though they had ridden fast and far, when several of the party began to suggest the expediency of a return, urging, that in their utter ignorance of their own locality, as well as of the position of the enemy, they might be blindly rushing upon unknown perils.[410] But Balliol, with a resolute determination that has often extricated brave men out of difficulties, refused to listen to such suggestions, avowing his own intention of proceeding at all risks, and the waverers were ashamed to turn back. Onwards they pressed, whilst close upon their right lay Warkworth, swarming with the Scottish foe; but enshrouded in the obscurity of the friendly mist they passed the river Coquet in safety, and continued their adventurous progress. The fog rolled away as the morning advanced, displaying to the delighted eyes of the little band the friendly walls of Alnwick, and they were hastening with alacrity towards its welcome shelter, when they perceived a small body of about sixty knights, who were engaged in tilting in a neighbouring meadow. The tilting party was composed of William and his attendant suite, who paid little or no attention to the approach of a band of horsemen, mistaking them for a party of Earl Duncan’s mounted force returning to the Scottish camp, until a nearer view of the advancing barons revealed the English cognizances. One moment of reflection would have warned the king not to imperil the whole fortune of the war upon such an unequal contest; but no such thoughts crossed the mind of William, and, with the hasty exclamation, “Now will it be seen who is a true knight,” he dashed at once against the enemy with all the reckless gallantry of a knight-errant. The result can be easily imagined. His horse was immediately slain—for this was no tilting match, and his opponents aimed at securing their prize—and before he could disengage himself from the dying charger, William was a helpless captive. His nobles determined to share his fate; many of his suite, who had not been present at the catastrophe, riding in and surrendering to the English barons to avoid the imputation of deserting their sovereign; and, before the close of the same fatal Saturday, the Barons of Yorkshire again entered Newcastle with their illustrious captive in their charge.[411]
On the following morning the royal prisoner was removed, for greater security, to Richmond castle; and the important intelligence of his capture was forwarded in haste to London, where Henry had by this time arrived. Alarmed at the assemblage of the hostile fleet, and anxious to be upon the spot to oppose the threatened invasion, he had crossed from Barfleur in a gale of wind, undeterred by the elements which held his enemies wind-bound at Gravelines, reaching Southampton in safety on the evening of the 8th of July. All that night, and the following day, he is said to have hurried on, without rest or refreshment beyond bread and water, to the tomb of the murdered Becket, at whose shrine either policy, or repentance, dictated the performance of a penance, that, to the ideas of the present age, appears degrading. After he reached London, fatigue and excitement threw him into a fever, from which he was only partially recovered, when the messenger of Ranulph de Glanville, standing by the side of his bed on the morning of Thursday the 18th, aroused him from sleep, before daylight, with the welcome intelligence of William’s capture. All remembrance of his illness vanishing at the joyful tidings, before the close of the same day Henry departed for the north; and ere a fortnight had elapsed from the date of his misfortune, the royal captive was removed from Richmond castle, his legs were fettered under the body of a horse, and in this degrading position he was presented to Henry at Northampton.[412]
The effects of the calamity which had befallen the king of Scotland were at once instantaneous and decisive. His own army, stunned for the moment, only recovered to break out, as usual, into mutual dissension and strife. Gilbert and Uchtred, the lords of Galloway, hurrying homewards, destroyed the castles which had been built in their province to secure the authority of the king, drove out the royal officers, and then dispatched gifts and envoys to the English king with the offer of their fealty and submission. The Scots availed themselves of the anarchy of the moment to vent their long suppressed animosity against the townsmen and burghers, mostly of English origin, with whom David and his successors had filled the royal burghs and cities of their kingdom. The Earl of Huntingdon, relinquishing his high command, returned in haste to Scotland. Ferrers and De Mowbray threw themselves on Henry’s mercy; Gloucester and De Clare, the waverers of the western counties, met him with assurances of their fidelity; Hugh Bigot dismissed his Flemish auxiliaries; and the Bishop of Durham surrendered his castles, protesting that the presence of his nephew, the Count de Bar, was merely for his own protection: whilst the formidable fleet, which had threatened the invasion of the English coasts, melted away at the news of the disaster; and the Count of Flanders, with the younger Henry, drew off their forces from Gravelines to join Louis of France at the siege of Rouen. Within three weeks from the date of the catastrophe the power of Henry was re-established throughout England; and, as he had nothing more to fear in his own kingdom, he prepared to face his opponents in France, 8th Aug. and sailed with his Scottish prisoners for Normandy. Such were the first consequences of William’s fatal error, in mistaking the rash folly of “a true knight” for the gallant bearing of a king.[413]
In another month the war was brought to a triumphant conclusion by the elder Henry, who, at the personal request of Louis of France, set all his prisoners at liberty, with the exception of the king of Scotland, detaining William in fetters at Falaise until the month of December, before the terms of his release were finally arranged.[414] They may be briefly described as follows:—
William was to become the liegeman of his lord, the King Henry, for Scotland, Galloway, and all his other lands, and to perform fealty to his liege lord in the same way as other vassals. His brother, his barons, his clergy, and all his other vassals, were to become the liegemen of the English crown, acknowledging that they held their lands of the English king, and swearing to support him, their liege lord, against the king of Scotland, if the latter ever failed in his fidelity.