The English, forgetting the lessons of the Welsh wars, sent on the archers in front of the cavalry. Bruce, seeing that their missiles were playing havoc on his dense ranks, directed his small cavalry force to charge the archers on their left flank. The unsupported bowmen at once fell back in confusion, leaving the cavalry to do its work. Meanwhile the English men-at-arms were advancing in three "battles," the first of which then came into action. Many of the English fell into the pits prepared for them, and the Scottish shields and pikes broke the attack of those who evaded these obstacles. Gloucester fought with rare gallantry, but was badly seconded by his followers. At last his horse was slain under him, and he was knocked down and killed. The troop which he led fled panic-stricken from the field. The Scots then advanced with such vigour that the English never recovered from the disorder into which their first disaster had thrown them. While these things were going on, the second and third English "battles" had been making feeble efforts to take their part in the fight. But the first line cut them off from direct access to the foe, and the archers of the second battle did more harm to their friends than to their enemies by shooting wildly, straight in front of them. There was no single directing force, nor, after Gloucester's fall, even one conspicuous leader who would set an example of blind valour. Hundreds of English knights, who had not drawn their swords, were soon fleeing in terror before the enemy. Edward, who had taken up his station in the rear battle, rode off the field and never dismounted until he reached Dunbar, whence he fled by sea to Berwick.
Abandoned by their leaders, the English retreated as best they could. Many of their best knights lay dead on the field, and more were drowned in the Forth or Bannock, or swallowed up in the bogs, than were slain in the fight. The Scots, whose losses were slight, showed a prudent tendency to capture rather than slay the knights and barons, in order that they might hold them up to ransom, and though many desisted from the pursuit to plunder the baggage train, those who followed the English fugitives reaped an abundant harvest of captives. Hereford was chased into Bothwell castle, which was still held for the English. But next day the Scottish official who commanded there for Edward opened the gates to Bruce, and the earl became a prisoner. Pembroke escaped with difficulty on foot, along with a contingent of Welsh infantry. The mighty English army had ceased to exist; and with the surrender of Stirling, next day, Bruce's career attained its culminating point. His long years of trial were at last over, and the clever adventurer could henceforth enjoy in security the crown which he had so gallantly won.
The military results of Bannockburn were of extreme importance. The ablest of contemporary annalists aptly compared Bruce's victory to the battle of Courtrai. An even nearer analogy was the fight at Morgarten where, within two years, the pikemen of the Forest Cantons were to scatter the chivalry of the Hapsburgers as effectively as the Flemings won the day at Courtrai or the Scots at Bannockburn. The English had forgotten the military lessons of Edward I., as completely as they had forgotten his political lessons, and their reliance on the obsolete and unsupported cavalry charge was their undoing. Bruce, on the other hand, had improved upon the teaching of Wallace and Edward I. His use of his men-at-arms on foot anticipates the English tactics of the Hundred Years' War. The presence of these heavily armed troopers in his ranks gave him a strength in defence, and an impetuosity in attack, which made it a simple matter to break up the undisciplined squadrons opposed to him. Bannockburn rang the death-knell of the tactics which since Hastings had been regarded as the perfection of military art. The political lessons of the victory were of not less importance. It is almost too much to say that Bannockburn won for Scotland its independence, for Scottish independence had already been vindicated. But the easy victory brought home to men's minds the full measure of the Scottish triumph. It was already clear that so long as Edward lived, England would never make the continued effort which, as Edward I.'s wars both in Wales and Scotland had shown, could alone systematically conquer a nation. Bruce's difficulties were not so much with the English as with the Scots. It was no small task to unite the English of the Lothians, the Welsh of the south-west, the Norsemen of the extreme north, and the Celts of the hills into a single Scottish nation. He had against him the separatist local feeling which Scottish history and ethnology made inevitable, and it took time for him to obtain that prestige, which should hedge a king, and raise him above the crowd of feudal earls and clan chieftains, who thought themselves as good as the sometime Earl of Carrick. Such dignity and distinction Bannockburn supplied, and such measure of national unity and strong monarchical authority as Scotland ever enjoyed, came from the triumph of him who became, even more than Wallace, the hero of the new nation. For the next few years the Scots took the aggressive. They induced the French kings to renew the alliance which Philip IV. had made with them in the early years of the contest. They obtained papal recognition for their king and the withdrawal of the ban of the Church on Comyn's murderer; they plundered northern England from end to end, and broke down Anglo-Norman rule in Ireland; they plotted for the resurrection of the Welsh principality; and, worse than all, they made common cause with the baronial opposition. Hence it followed that the political results of the victory were as important to England as they were to Scotland itself. The troubled history of the next eight years reveals in detail the effects of Bannockburn on England. Edward's defeat threw him into the power of the ordainers. The ordainers, when called upon to govern, showed themselves as incapable as ever Edward or his favourites had been. The results were misrule, aristocratic faction, popular distress, and mob violence. Ineffective as are the first seven years of the reign of Edward of Carnarvon, the eight years which followed Bruce's victory plunged England deeper into the pit of degradation, from which neither the king nor the king's foes were strong, wise, or honest enough to release her.
CHAPTER XIII.
LANCASTER, PEMBROKE, AND THE DESPENSERS.
Bannockburn was almost welcomed by the ordainers, for it afforded new opportunities of humiliating the defeated king. While Edward tarried at Berwick, Lancaster was in his castle of Pontefract with a force far larger than his cousin's. Loudly declaring that the true cause of the disaster was Edward's neglect to carry out the ordinances, he announced his intention of immediately enforcing their observance. At a parliament at York, in September, Edward delivered himself altogether into Thomas's hands, ordering the immediate execution of the ordinances, and replacing his ministers and sheriffs by nominees of the ordainers. The only boon that he obtained was that the earls postponed the removal from court of Hugh Despenser and Henry Beaumont, the two faithful friends who had guarded him in his flight from Bannockburn. Despenser, however, thought it prudent to avoid his enemies by going into hiding. Edward's submission did not help him against the Scots. The earls resolved that the question of an expedition was to be postponed until the next parliament, on the ground that it was imprudent to take action until Hereford and the other captives had been released. It was a sorry excuse, for King Robert and his brother were devastating the northern counties with fire and sword, and it gave new ground to the suspicion of an understanding between the Scottish king and the ordainers. But the victor of Bannockburn showed surprising moderation. He suffered the bodies of Gloucester and the slain barons to be buried among their ancestors, and released Gloucester's father-in-law, Monthermer, without ransom, declaring that the thing in the world which he most desired was to live in peace with the English. He welcomed an exchange of prisoners, by which his wife, Elizabeth de Burgh, his sister, his daughter, and the Bishop of Glasgow were restored to Scotland. The release of Hereford soon added to the king's troubles.
In January, 1315, Edward's humiliation was completed at a London parliament. Hugh Despenser and Walter Langton were removed from the council. The "superfluous members" of the royal household, denounced as "excessively burdensome to the king and the land," were dismissed, and drastic ordinances were drawn up for the regulation of the diminished following still allowed to the king. Edward was put on an allowance of £10 a day, and the administration of his revenues taken out of his hands. The grant made was accompanied by the condition that its spending should be entirely in the hands of the barons, and the estates arranged after their own fashion for the new Scottish campaign. When summer came, Lancaster insisted on taking the command himself, and thus gave a new grievance to Pembroke, who had already been appointed general. Lancaster was henceforth the indispensable man. When parliament met at Lincoln, in January, 1316, the few magnates who attended would transact no business until his arrival. On his tardy appearance in the last days of the session, it was resolved "that the lord king should do nothing grave or arduous without the advice of the council, and that the Earl of Lancaster should hold the chief place in the council". It was only after some hesitation that the earl accepted this position. Once more the king was forced to confirm the ordinances. Liberal grants were made by the estates, and every rural township was called upon to furnish and pay a foot soldier to fight the Scots.
The commander of the army and the chief counsellor of the king, Lancaster, was in a stronger position than any subject since the days of Simon of Montfort. He could afford to despise aristocratic jealousy and royal malignity. To the commons he was the good earl, who was standing up for the rights of the people. He was the darling of the clergy, who looked upon him as the pillar of orthodoxy, the disciple of Winchelsea, and the upholder of the rights of Holy Church. The warlike and energetic barons of the north were his sworn followers, and, apart from his hold upon public opinion, he could always fall back on the resources of his five earldoms. But events were soon to show that the successful leader of opposition was absolutely incapable of carrying out a constructive policy. He had no ideals, no principles, no feeling of the importance of administrative efficiency, no sense of responsibility, no power of controlling his followers. He never understood that his business was no longer to oppose but to act. The clear-headed monk of Malmesbury paints the disastrous results of his inaction: "Whatsoever pleased the king, the earl's servants strove to overthrow; and whatever pleased the earl, was declared by the king's servants to be treasonable; and so, at the suggestion of the evil one, the households of earl and king put themselves in the way and would not allow their masters, by whom the land should have been defended, to be of one accord". Even the implied understanding with the King of Scots was not abandoned by the man on whom the responsibility rested of defeating him. When Bruce devastated the north of England he still spared the lands of the king's "chief counsellor," as of old he had spared the lands of the opposition leader. When, in 1316, Lancaster mustered his forces at Newcastle against the Scots, Edward repaid him for his inaction in 1314 by declining to accompany him over the border. "Thereupon," wrote the border annalist,[1] "the earl at once went back; for neither trusted the other." Edward, who forgot and forgave nothing, secretly negotiated with the pope for absolution from his oath to the ordinances. He gradually built up a court party, and soon restored Hugh Despenser to his position in the household. As might be expected in such circumstances no effective resistance was made to the Scots.
[1] Lanercost Chronicle, p. 233.
It was a time of severe distress in England. In 1315 a rainy summer ruined the harvest. Great floods swept away the hay from the fields, and drowned the sheep and cattle. In 1316 famine raged, especially in the north. For a hundred years, we are told, such scarcity of corn had not been known. A bushel of wheat was sold at London for forty pence, and the Northumbrians were driven to feed on dogs, horses, and other unwonted food. Pestilence followed in the train of famine. It was in vain that parliament passed laws, limiting the repasts of the barons' households to two courses of meat, and fixing the price of the chief sorts of victuals. The only result was that dealers refused to bring their produce to market. Then the legislation, passed in a panic, was repealed in a panic. "It is better," said a chronicler, "to buy things at a high rate than not to be able to buy them at all."