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.