The rebellion of Lancaster involved many noblemen in his ruin. Ninety-five knights and barons were cast into prison, and stood their trial for high treason. Other bloody executions followed with merciless barbarity. The lords Warren-de-Lisle, William de Fouchet, Thomas Mandute, Fitz-William, Henry de Bradburne, and William Cheney, suffered at Pontefract; and Clifford, Mowbray, and Deynville were decapitated at York. Thus bloodily did King Edward avenge the death of Gaveston—for there can be little doubt that the blow aimed at the Spencers, and the recollection of Gaveston’s doom, were the motives that moved him to such a cruel exercise of his power over his revolted and defeated subjects. Perhaps a more humane and generous policy might have averted the evil days, when he was left as helpless in the hands of his enemies as was Lancaster on the day of his defeat and capture. In reguerdon of his great service to the crown, Sir Andrew Harcla was exalted to the rank of Earl of Carlisle.
Among the revolted barons who fought with Lancaster and Hereford at Boroughbridge, was John de Mowbray, lord of the vale of Mowbray, of Kirby Malzeard, and Thirsk and Upsall Castles. Tradition still retains his name, and gives a strangely wild and legendary account of his death; probable enough, but not to be received as authentic history. In the breaking up of the Lancastrian troops, in the last stormy passage of the day, John de Mowbray, disengaging himself from the press, put spurs to his horse, and rode off, in the direction of Upsall Castle, near Thirsk, where he hoped to secure his safety. The royalists, however, were soon on his track, pressed him hard, and reached him as he was making his way through a lane, within sight of Upsall Castle. In a moment he was seized and unhelmed, and his throat stretched across the trunk of a fallen tree as one of the King’s men struck off his head. His armour was then stripped off and suspended from the branches of an oak tree, his body being cast into a way-side ditch. The tradition is preserved in the name of the lane which is still called Chop Head Loaning. The Rev. Thomas Parkinson, F.R.H.S., gives this tradition at length in his interesting volume, “Yorkshire Legends and Traditions,” and quotes Mrs. Susan K. Phillips’ poetical version of the legend—a poem which would have delighted Sir Walter Scott.
The blood-stained old wooden bridge across the Ure has long ceased to bear the traffic of the locality, and a handsome stone erection now replaces it. Harcla and Ward’s old fighting ground, that bristled with sword and spear and deadly bill on the 16th of March, 1321, is now more prosaic soil, burdened with houses, timber, and coal-yards; and is partly cleft by a short canal, the property of the River Ure Navigation. When the river was embanked in 1792, the excavators at the Old Banks, below the bridge, discovered some presumed relics of the battle, consisting of many fragments of arms and armour.
[VIII.—BATTLE OF BYLAND ABBEY.]
A.D. 1322.
After the tragedy of Earl Lancaster’s revolt had been concluded by the wholesale executions of the barons and knights implicated in that misguided movement, the Scots, commanded by Randolph, Earl of Moray, invaded the Western marches, and ravaged the country in their customary barbarous style, slaying all who attempted resistance, and driving before them all the flocks and herds that their swift and well-organised cavalry could collect. What they could not carry away they burnt, returning to Scotland without having received a check in the field. Where they had passed, the summer sun gleamed brightly on ruined cots and devastated fields, and the English peasantry, inured to toil and suffering, gazed despairingly upon the ruin of the fruit of the soil, fostered by their hard labour, and by the sun and rain of the departed months.
While the Scots were acting Edward of Cærnarvon was preparing to take the field. Referring to the English monarch’s victory at Boroughbridge, Sir Walter Scott makes the following reflections:—“This gleam of success on his arms, which had been sorely tarnished, seems to have filled Edward, who was of a sanguine and buoyant temperament, with dreams of conquest over all his enemies. As a king never stands more securely than on the ruins of a discovered and suppressed conspiracy, he wrote to the pope to give himself no further solicitude to procure a truce or peace with the Scots, since he had determined to bring them to reason by force.”
Edward spared no pains to ensure the success of the expedition into Scotland, and Parliament authorised military levies in the country to the extent of one man from every English hamlet and village, and a proportionate number from the towns and cities. Subsidies of money were largely granted, and enabled Edward to obtain supplies of arms and provisions from over seas, besides reinforcing his army with soldiers from Aquitaine.