6. David II., 1320-1370.—David, who was only eight years old when his father died, was crowned at Scone and anointed which no King of Scots had ever before been, as this was considered the special right of independent sovereigns only. The government was in the hands of Randolf, who had been appointed Regent by the Estates before the death of the late king. In the early part of the reign the country was torn by a struggle which, as it was really a civil war, was more dangerous to its independence and more hurtful to the national character than the long war with the English had been. This war was caused by those barons who, holding large estates in England, had, by marriage or by inheritance, become possessed of lands in Scotland, which they lost by the Act of the last reign against absentees. Hitherto the so-called Scottish nobles had been Norman barons, with equal interests in both kingdoms, but this act forced them to decide for one or the other. Hence it was the mere chance of the respective value of their lands that decided whether such names as Percy and Douglas should be feared north or south of the Border.
7. Edward Balliol's Invasion.—These disinherited barons gathered round Edward Balliol, the son of King John, and determined on an invasion of Scotland on their own account, giving out that they came to win back the crown for him. Just at this time of threatened danger the Regent died, and was succeeded in his trust by Donald, Earl of Mar, another nephew of King Robert. The invaders landed on the coast of Fife, and at Duplin in Strathearn they defeated a large army under the command of the Regent, who was slain. They then took possession of Perth, and crowned Balliol at Scone, September 24th, 1332. He acknowledged himself the vassal of Edward of England; but the latter did not openly take a part in the war, until the Scots, by their frequent raids across the Border, could be said to have broken the Peace of Northampton.
8. Battle of Halidon Hill.—In the spring of 1333, Edward the Third invested Berwick, and the governor agreed to give it up if it were not relieved by the Scots within a given time. The new Regent, Archibald Douglas, brother to the Good Lord James, marched to raise the siege. It was very much the case of Bannockburn reversed, for now the English had the advantage of being posted on Halidon Hill, close by the town, while the Scots, the assailants, had to struggle through a marsh. The English archers won the day; the Regent was killed; Berwick was forced to yield; and Balliol gave it over to the English, and placed all the strongholds south of the Forth in their hands. For three years longer there was much fighting on the Border with pretty equal success, until the French wars drew the attention of Edward the Third from Scotland, and then the national party began to get the upper hand. David, Earl of Athole, Balliol's chief supporter, was defeated and slain at Culbleen, in the Highlands; and when Robert the High Steward became Regent in 1338, he won back the strongholds. Soon after, Balliol left the kingdom, and in 1341 David and his Queen Joan of England came home from France, where he had been sent to be out of the way of the troubles. Five years of comparative peace followed. A succession of truces were made with England, but they were not strictly kept on the Border.
9. Capture of the King.—While Edward was busy with the siege of Calais, David, to keep up the spirit of the alliance with France, broke the truce between England and Scotland by invading England. He was defeated and captured by the Archbishop of York at the head of the force of the northern counties in 1346. The battle in which he was taken was called the battle of Neville's Cross, from a cross afterwards put up to mark the field by Sir Ralph Neville. For eleven years David remained a captive, and Scotland was governed by the former Regent, the Steward. During that time Berwick was won and lost again. Edward, to whom Balliol had handed over his claim to the kingdom for a pension of two thousand pounds, brought an English army as far as the Forth. As they could neither find provisions to sustain them nor an enemy to fight with, they were forced to return; but they had left such traces of their progress on churches and dwelling-houses that their inroad was remembered as the "burnt Candlemas." In 1347 David was released, the ransom being fixed at 100,000 marks. He made many after-visits to England, and proposed to the Estates, that Lionel, the second son of Edward, should succeed him, but to this they would not agree. He died in 1370, and left no children. After the death of Joan he had married Margaret Logie, a woman of obscure birth.
10. Robert II., 1370-1390.—David was succeeded by his sister's son, Robert, the Steward of the kingdom. This office was hereditary, and it gradually passed into the surname of the family who held it and became common to the different branches. The stewardship was first granted to Walter Fitz-Alan, a Breton baron, by David. Robert was allowed to mount the throne unopposed. It had been feared that William Lord Douglas, who through his mother, a sister of the Red Comyn, represented the claim that had been resigned by the Balliols, would have disputed his right to the throne, but he did not. Robert was twice married. His first wife was Elizabeth More, by whom he had four sons and several daughters. After her death he married Euphemia, daughter of the Earl of Ross, and had two sons and four daughters. The descendants of this second marriage claimed the crown on the ground that the dispensation from Rome had not been obtained, which, as Robert and Elizabeth were near of kin, was needful to make the marriage valid, and the children legitimate. Dispensations for each marriage have since been discovered, which decide the right of Robert's first family.
11. The French Allies.—At the end of the truce with England, in 1385, war broke out again. The French sent a body of 2,000 men, 1,000 stands of armour, and 50,000 gold pieces to the aid of their allies the Scots. Sir John de Vienne, Admiral of France, was the leader of the French auxiliaries. Richard the Second of England, with an army of 70,000 men, invaded Scotland, and marched as far north as the Forth. But the country had been wasted before him, so that the only harm he could do was to destroy Melrose Abbey. Meanwhile the Scots had harried the northern counties of his own kingdom with their French allies. The French afterwards said that in the dioceses of Carlisle and Durham they had burned more than the value of all the towns in Scotland. But the Frenchmen despised the poverty of the Scots, and were disgusted with their way of fighting; and as the Scots in return were uncivil and inhospitable to them, they went away before long, and were as glad to get back to their own land as the Scots were to get rid of them.
12. Raid of Otterburn.—A few years later the Scots barons made another raid on the north of England. An army 5,000 strong mustered at Jedburgh. By the capture of an English spy, they learned that the English meant to keep out of their way, and, while they entered England, to make a counter-raid on the south of Scotland. To defeat this plan the Scots parted their force into two bands, one of which was to enter England on the east, the other on the west. The eastern division, under the Earls of Douglas, Dunbar, and Moray, swept the country as far as Durham. As they were returning laden with spoil, they tarried three days near Newcastle, where were gathered the English barons under Ralph and Henry Percy, sons of the Earl of Northumberland, the Warden of the Marches. Many skirmishes then took place between the two forces. In one of these Douglas took the pennon of Sir Henry Percy, surnamed Hotspur, and challenged him to come to his tent and win it back. The next day the Scots moved off and encamped near Otterburn Tower. Percy hurried after them and attacked them in the night. The Scots, though fewer in number, had the advantage of being in a well-defended camp. They won the day, but the victory was dearly bought, for Douglas was slain in the fight. This battle, in which many lives were lost without any real cause, and without doing any good whatever, was reckoned one of the best fought battles of that warlike time. It was all hand to hand fighting, and all the knights engaged in it on both sides showed great valour. Their feats of arms have been commemorated in the spirit-stirring ballad of Chevy Chase. The Scots came back to their own land, bringing with them Hotspur and more than forty English knights whom they had taken prisoners. This fight, which was called the Raid of Otterburn, took place in August 1388.
Robert died in 1390. He left the country at peace; for a truce between England and France, taking in Scotland as an ally of the latter, had been made the year before.
13. Robert III., 1390-1406.—The eldest son of the late King was John, but, as Balliol had made this name odious to the people, he changed it at his coronation to Robert. The country was in a miserable state. The nobles had been so long used to war with England that they could not bear to be at peace. They fought with one another, and preyed on the peasants and burghers. As the King was too weak both in mind and body to restrain them, the Estates placed the sovereign power in the hands of his son David, who was created Duke of Rothesay. This is the first time the title of Duke appears in Scottish history. Rothesay was to act as the King's Lieutenant for three years, with the advice of a council chosen by the Estates. Meanwhile the real rulers were the King's two brothers, Robert, Duke of Albany, and Alexander, Earl of Buchan, who was master of the country north of the Firths, where his ferocity won him the surname of the Wolf of Badenoch. Albany, anxious, as he gave out, to restrain the wild follies of his nephew Rothesay, seized him and confined him in Falkland Castle. There he died. Albany said that he had died from natural causes, but the people believed that he had been starved by his uncle. After his death, Albany, with his associate Archibald, Earl of Douglas, was cleared of suspicion by an act of the Estates. He was afterwards appointed Governor.
14. Clan Battle near Perth.—During this reign there was a deadly combat between two bands of Highlanders on a meadow by the Tay, called the North Inch of Perth. The King and his nobles, and a vast crowd of persons of all ranks, gathered to see them fight. There were thirty chosen men on each side, and they fought as was their wont, with axes, swords, or bows, and wore no armour. Before the fight began one man left the ranks, swam the Tay, and fled. One Henry Wynd, called "Gow Chrom," or the "Crooked Smith," was hired to fill his place. They fought with fury, and did not leave off till ten men, all wounded, were left on the one side, and one only upon the other. Gow Chrom did such good service that he is said to have won the victory for the clan that had enlisted his services, though it is said he knew so little about the matter that he was quite uncertain which side he was fighting for. Like Otterburn, this slaughter simply showed the skill of the combatants in killing one another. The name of the clans engaged, and their cause of quarrel, if they had any, have been alike forgotten.