# Cassell's Illustrated History of England/Volume 1/Chapter 61

CHAPTER LXI.
Edward II.—Weakness of the King—His favourite Gaveston—The King's Marriage with Isabella of France—Gaveston's Death—Losses in Scotland—Battle of Bannockburn—Edward Bruce attempts to conquer Ireland—Incursions of the Scots under Robert Bruce.
The transition from Edward I. to his son, Edward II., was an abrupt descent from power to weakness. It was one of those striking examples of the extraordinary succession of a feeble son to a great and able father which have puzzled the world to account for, from the days of Solomon and Rehoboam to our own. In all ranks and departments of life we are met, in every age, by this singular phenomenon of men distinguished by pre-eminout genius, and who have made, by the vigour of their intellectual action, a strong impression on their ago, leaving behind them an enfeebled or commonplace off-spring. In some cases philosophical inquirers have supposed this to have been the result of an ill-assorted or ill-cemented marriage, where the union has not been one of soul and affection, but a mere conventional association, yielding imperfect fruit. In others it would seem as if the parent had exhausted, by almost superhuman efforts of mind, the bulk of his mental energy, even consuming beforehand the portion due to his posterity. Whatever be the cause, the examples of such deficiency in the sons of such great men are prominent and numerous, and none are more melancholy than the one now before us.
The great monarch whose proud ambition it had been to embrace the whole island in his empire, to maintain his possessions in France, and to rule his kingdom by new and superior institutions, was gone, and there appeared on the throne a youth of three-and-twenty, handsome, generous, and agreeable, but destitute of any trait which implied the elements of future greatness. He was not even vigorous in the passions which carry youth out of the direct line. He had no decided tendency to any dangerous vice. He was gentle, and disposed to enjoy the social advantages of his high position. The people of all classes and orders hastened to swear fealty to him, arguing, from the prestige of his parentage, and the reputation of his amiability, a fortunate reign. But the very first movements of the young king were fatal to those anticipations, and both at home and abroad brought a cloud over the brilliant visions which had attended his ascension to the throne. He was essentially weak, and all weak things seek extraneous support. The vine and the ivy cling to the tree that is near them, and the effeminate monarch inevitably seeks the fatal support of favourites. This was the rook on which Edward's fortunes instantly struck, and the mischief of which no experience could induce him to repair.
This disastrous propensity to favouritism, which early manifested itself, had excited the alarm of the stern old king, and led him to take decided measures against the evils which it threatened to produce. There was a brave Gascon knight, who had served in the army of Edward I. with high honour, and whose son, Piers Gaveston, had consequently been admitted into the establishment of the young prince. This youth was remarkably handsome and accomplished. He was possessed of singular grace of carriage and elegance of demeanour. In all the exercises of the age, both martial and social, he excelled, and was full of the sprightly sallies of wit and mirth which are so natural to the Gascon. The young prince became thoroughly fascinated by him. He was naturally disposed to strong and confidential friendship, and gave himself up to the society of this gay young courtier with all the ardour of youth. His father, quickly perceiving this extravagant prepossession, and foreseeing all its fatal consequences, had banished the favourite from the kingdom. On his death-bed he again solemnly warned him against favourites, depicting to him the certain ruin that such foolish attachments would bring upon him in the midst of powerful and jealous nobles; and forbade him, on pain of his curse, ever to recall Gaveston to England.
But no sooner was the breath out of the old king's body, than the infatuated Edward forgot every solemn injunction laid upon him. The Scots were again strong in the field, and the late king had taken an oath from his son that he should never be buried till they were once more subjugated. But regardless of this, the young king, after making a feint of prosecuting the Scottish war, and marching as far as Cumnock, on the borders of Ayrshire, there halted, and retraced his steps to London without attempting anything whatever. Arriving in London, he at once buried the body of his father in Westminster Abbey, on the 27th of October.
The only thing for which he appeared impatient was the return of his favourite Gaveston, whom he had recalled the moment the sceptre fell into his hands; and the royal summons was as promptly obeyed as sent. Gaveston joined his royal patron before he returned from Scotland. The earldom of Cornwall had been conferred on him before his arrival; and the thoughtless upstart appeared in the midst of the court covered with his new honours, and disposed to show his resentment for past disdain to the most powerful men of the kingdom. Under the ascendancy of Gaveston, the king displaced all his father's old and experienced ministers. There was a revolution in the great offices of the court, as sudden as it was complete. The chancellor, the treasurer, the lords of the exchequer, the judges, and every other holder of an important post, were dismissed, and others more suited to the fancy or partiality of this favourite substituted. To his own share of honours and emoluments there appeared no limit. The earldom of Cornwall had been held by Edraond, son of Richard, King of the Romans, and was an appanage which had not only been possessed by a prince of the blood, but was amply sufficient of itself for the maintenance of one. But this seemed little to the king for the man whom he delighted to honour. He was continually lavishing fresh honours and riches on Gaveston. Ho handed to him the treasure which his father had laid up for the prosecution of the crusades; he presented him with estate after estate, many of them conferring fresh titles of distinction; and it was said that you could scarcely travel into any part of the kingdom without beholding splendid houses and parks, formerly possessed by great families, now conferred on this young favourite. Nor did the royal bounty stop here. The king gave him extensive grants of land in Guienne; and, as if he would raise him to a par with royalty itself, he married him to his own niece, Margaret de Clare, sister ​to the Earl of Gloucestor, and appointed him lord chamberlain. All this did not seem to satisfy the king's desire of heaping honours and wealth upon him; and he is reported to have said that, if it wore possible, he would give him the kingdom itself.
It would have been strange if the favourite, under such a rain of favour and fortune, had displayed more wisdom than his royal friend. It would have required a mind of peculiar fortitude and moderation not to have been thrown off the balance by such a rush of greatness, and Gaveston was not of that character. He was gay, vain, and volatile, and rejoiced in the opportunity of humbling and insulting all who had real claims to superiority over himself. The great and proud nobles who had surrounded the throne of Edward I. in the midst of its victorious splendour, and who had contributed by their counsels and their swords to place it above all others in Europe, naturally beheld with ill-concealed resentment this unworthy concentration of the royal grace and munificence in one so far inferior to them in birth and merit; and Gaveston, instead of endeavouring to appease that resentment, did all in his power to exasperate it by every species of ostentation and parade of his advantages. Vanity, profusion, and rapacity of fresh acquisition all united in him. He kept up the style and establishment of a prince; he treated the gravest officers of state and the possessors of the noblest names with studied insolence. He imagined that in possessing the favour of the king nothing could again shake him, and therefore he was as little solicitous to conciliate friends as he was careless to make enemies. At every joust and tournament ho gloried in foiling the greatest of the English nobility and princes, and did not spare them in their defeat, but ridiculed them to his companions with jest and sarcasm. This could not last long without combining the whole court and kingdom for his destruction, and perhaps for his master's.
The young king was bound, by the laws of feudalism, to pass over to France, and do homage to Philip for his province of Guienne, and, by those of chivalry, to fulfil, as early as possible, the contract of marriage with the Princess Isabella, to whom he had been long affianced. This was a contract into which his father had been led in the course of his ambitious projects, and for which he had broken off the previous contract with Guy, Count of Flanders, for his daughter Philippa. It was a marriage projected in cruel perfidy, the old count being left to the malice of his enemies, and to perish in prison in his eighty-first year, and the fair, forsaken Philippa, who was really attached to Edward, dying of a broken heart about two years before this ill-fated espousal. The results of this marriage wore as disastrous as its arrangement was unprincipled. Isabella soon came to entertain a deep contempt for and deeper hatred of her husband, and remains branded to all time as the accomplice in, if not the instigator of, his murder; and from this alliance sprung those claims on the crown of France, which steeped the soil of that country with blood, and raised an enmity between the two nations prolific of ages of carnage, bitterness, and misery.
Great Seal of Edward II.
Isabella of France was reputed to be the most beautiful woman of her time, and she was as high-spirited and intriguing as she was handsome. The royal couple were married on the 28th of January, 1308, with great pomp and ceremony, in the church of Our Lady of Boulogne, five kings and three queens being present on the occasion. No great affection appears to have existed on either side. Isabella could not fail to be already well aware of her husband's character, and she is said to have trusted to her influence to overturn the king's favour for Gaveston, and to be able to rule him and the kingdom herself. Edward, though wedded to the loveliest woman of the age, and surrounded by every species of festivity and rejoicing, evinced, on his part, no other desire than to get back as speedily as possible to his beloved Gaveston, to whom, in his absence, he had loft the management of the kingdom—a fresh indignity to his own royal kinsmen. The festal gaieties of the French court were suddenly broken off to gratify this impatient anxiety of the king to return, and the royal couple embarked for England, accompanied by a numerous routine of French noblesse, who came to attend the coronation.
Gaveston, accompanied by a great array of the English ​aristocracy, hastened to meet the king and queen on landing; and the scene which ensued was by no means calculated to create respect for the king, either in the mind of his young bride, or of her distinguished countrymen present. Forgetting the very presence of the queen, Edward rushed into the arms of his favourite and overwhelmed him with caresses and terms of endearment. The queen looked on with evident contempt; her kinsmen with open indignation.
The coronation took place at Westminster, on the 24th of February; and this great occasion—which, by judicious management, might have been made a means of uniting all parties, and raising the respect for the king—by his irremediable and utterly blind devotion to his favourite, became a fresh cause of scorn and exasperation. This fatal trait in the monarch appeared rather like the effect of what, in those ages, was called glamour, the spell of some powerful sorcerer, or of witchcraft, cast over an individual to destroy him, than merely weakness or folly. It seemed as if every opportunity was sought, rather than merely employed, to exalt the favourite, no matter at whatever cost, whatever risk, or whatever alienation of men's minds. Gaveston was put forward as the principal personage—the principal object of attention and worship, to the great insult of the barons and chief men of the realm, all now assembled. He only must carry the crown before the king and queen, though this was an office to which the great Earls of Lancaster or Hereford might have laid more fitting claim. The nobles were filled with indignation, which Gaveston, instead of endeavouring to disarm by more modest conduct, appeared to take a particular pleasure in aggravating to the extreme. He appeared in the greatest splendour of attire, and in his equipage and retinue outshining them all. In the tournaments which succeeded, he challenged, and by his indisputable vigour and address succeeded inunhorsing, the four most illustrious nobles of the land—men distinguished not only for their high rank, their great estates, and high connections, but as the successful leaders of the national armies—the Earls of Lancaster, Hereford, Pembroke, and Warenne. This brought matters to a crisis. The anger of the whole nobility now burst forth beyond all bounds. The barons, four days after the coronation, appeared before the king with a petition which had rather the tone of a remonstrance, and insisted that he should instantly banish Piers Gaveston. The king, hesitating, and yet alarmed, replied that he would give them an answer in Parliament.
When this Parliament met, it appeared fully armed, and with an air that menaced civil war, if its terms wore not complied with. Lancaster, by far the most powerful subject in England, was the centre and head of this movement. He was first prince of the blood; possessed of immense estates, which were on the eve, by his marriage with the heiress of the Earl of Lincoln, of being increased to no less than sis earldoms, including all those powers and jurisdictions which in that age were attached to land, and made the great noble a species of king on his own estates, and over a great number of influential vassals, many of them being what were called lesser barons and knights. Lancaster was turbulent, ambitious, and haughty. He had received the deadliest affronts from Gaveston which a man of his proud character could possibly receive from an upstart, and he therefore hated him with a deadly hatred. This feeling was actively encouraged by the queen, who, herself inclined to rule, and having hoped to indulge easily this passion for power through the weakness of the king, saw with keen resentment her plans disappointed by the all-engrossing influence of the favourite. The rest of the barons, gladly gathering round Lancaster, and taking courage from the favouring disposition of the queen, resolved to crush the reigning parasite. They bound themselves by an oath to expel him from the kingdom. With his Parliament in this temper, and disturbances and robberies appearing in various parts of the kingdom—possibly fomented by the barons, or at least left unrestrained, as strengthening their cause—the king was compelled to submit to their demands; and the bishops bound Gaveston by a solemn oath never again to return to the kingdom under pain of excommunication.
The poor weak king, though he gave up his favourite for the time, still showed his folly to all the world. He endeavoured to soften the fall of Gaveston by accompanying him on his way towards the port. But instead of this port leading towards his own country, it proved to be Bristol, where it was soon discovered that he had only embarked for Ireland, over which Edward had appointed him Lord Lieutenant, with an establishment rivalling that of a king. Not only so, but before his departure, the infatuated monarch had actually bestowed fresh wealth and lands upon him both in England and Gascony. Gaveston, who really possessed much talent and learning, and might have made a distinguished and useful man, had he been employed by an able monarch, who would have called out his better, and kept in check his worst qualities, discharged his duties in Ireland as governor with vigour, repressed a rebellion there, and promoted order. But during the year he was absent his royal master was inconsolable, and never ceased labouring for his return. To this end he employed every means to conciliate the barons. He conferred on Lancaster the high office of hereditary steward; he flattered and promoted the Earl of Lincoln, the father-in-law of Lancaster; he heaped grants, civilities, and promises on Earl Warenne. Having thus prepared the way, he next applied for and obtained from the Pope a dispensation for Gaveston from that oath which the barons had imposed, that he should for ever abjure the realm. With this he instantly recalled Gaveston from Ireland, and flew with joyful impatience to Chester to meet him on his way. There, on seeing him, he rushed into his arms with every extravagance of joy. He then applied to the Parliament which had assembled at Stamford, for a formal permission to his re-establishment in England, and, won over by the gifts and flatteries of the king, they were equally weak, and allowed him to return.
All now in the court of the imbecile monarch was rejoicing and festivity. That court was filled by every species of mimes, players, musicians, and frivolous hangers-on. Scotland was all but lost; every day Bruce and his adherents, taking advantage of the neglect of this unhappy king, wore coming forth more and more openly from their hiding-places, taking fort after fort, and even daring to make devastating inroads into the northern lands of England. In other parts of the kingdom outrages, disorder, and violence abounded; but nothing could rouse the wretched king, or withdraw his ​attention from the court, which was filled with revelry and feasting, and the centre and soul of which was his beloved Gaveston. The people looked on and openly expressed their contempt for the favourite. They refused to call him anything but simply "that Piers Gaveston," which, incensing the foolish man, induced him to prevail on the king to put forth a proclamation commanding all men to give him his title of Earl of Cornwall whensoever he was spoken of, which had only the effect of covering him with ridicule. The past experience was entirely lost on this thoughtless personage. No sooner was he freed from the consequences of his insults to the great barons and courtiers than he repeated them with fresh modes of offence. He laughed at and caricatured them amongst his worthless associates. He threw his jibes and sarcasms right and left, and let them fall with the vilest nicknames on the loftiest heads. The great Earl of Lancaster was the "old hog," and the "stage-player;" the Earl of Pembroke—a tall man, of a pale aspect—was "Joseph the Jew; "the Earl of Gloucester was "the cuckold's bird;" and the stern Earl of Warwick "the black dog of Ardenne." Dearly did the vain favourite rue these galling epithets. The "black dog of Ardenne" swore a bitter oath that the miscreant should feel his teeth. The queen, more and more disgusted and incensed by the folly of the king, not only complained querulously to her father the King of France, but gave all encouragement to the angry nobles against the insolent Gaveston.
The riot at court had its necessary consequence—the dissipation of the royal funds and the need of more. The barons already, before voting supplies, had several times obliged the king to promise a redress of grievances. But now, on being summoned in October, 1309, three months after Gaveston's return, to meet at York, they refused, alleging fear of the all-powerful and vindictive favourite. The necessities of Edward made him imperatively renew the summons, but the barons still refused to assemble, and the object of the general odium was compelled to retire for the time. The barons then came together at Westminster in March of the following year, 1310; but they came fully armed, and Edward found himself completely in their power. They now insisted that he should sign a commission, enabling the Parliament to appoint twelve persons, who should take the name of ordainers, having power thoroughly to reform both the government and the king's household. They were to enact ordinances for this purpose, which should for ever have the force of laws, and which, in truth, involved the whole authority of the Crown and Parliament. The committee, instead, however, of being confined to twelve, was extended to twenty-eight persons—seven bishops, eight earls, and thirteen barons. This powerful body was authorised to form associations amongst themselves and their friends to enforce the strict observance of their ordinances; and all this was said to be for the glory of God, the security of the Church, and the honour and advantage of the king and kingdom.
Thus had the imbecility of the king reduced the nation to the yoke of a baronial and ecclesiastical oligarchy. This auspicious junto, however, conscious that they would be regarded with a jealous eye by the nation, voluntarily signed a declaration that they owed these concessions to the king's free grace; that they should not be drawn into a precedent, nor allowed to trench on the royal prerogative; and that the functions and power of the ordainers should expire at the term of Michaelmas the year following.
The committee sat in London, and in the ensuing year, 1311, presented their ordinances to the king and Parliament. Some of those ordinances were not only constitutional, but highly requisite, and tending to the due administration of the laws. They required sheriffs to be men of substance and standing; abolished the mischievous practice of issuing privy seals for the suspension of justice; restrained the practice of purveyance, where, under pretence of the king's service, enormous rapine and abuse were carried on; prohibited the alteration and debasement of the coin; made it illegal for foreigners to farm the revenues, ordering regular payment of taxes into the exchequer; revoked all the late grants of the crown-thus amiming a direct blow at the chief favourite, on whom the crown property had been most shamefully wasted. But the main grievance to the king was the sweeping ordinance against all evil counsellors, by which not only Piers Gaveston, but the whole tribe of sycophants and parasites were removed from their offices by name, and persons more agreeable to the barons wore put in their places. It was moreover decreed that for the future all considerable offices, not only in the law, revenue, and military government, but of the household also—and especial and immemorial royal privilege—should be under the appointment of the baronage. Still farther, the power of making war, or even assembling his military tenants, should no longer be exercised by the king, without the consent of his nobility. This was a wholesale suppression of the prerogatives of the crown, which the barons dared not have attempted in any ordinary reign; but this would probably have little affected Edward had not Piers Gaveston been declared a public enemy, and banished from the realm, on pain of death in case of his ever daring to return.
Nothing can show more decisively that Edward was not merely weak, as it regarded his favourite, but was totally unfit to rule a kingdom, having no serious feeling of its rights or drsire of its prosperity, than the fact that he signed all those deeply important decrees with a secret protest against them, moaning to break them on the first opportunity; that he sent Gaveston away to Flanders, intending as soon as possible to recall him, and the moment he was freed from the demands of Parliament, he set out to the north of England, pretending a campaign against the Scots. Once at liberty, he recalled Gaveston, declared his punishment quite illegal, restored him to all his honours, employments, and estates, and the two dear friends continued at Berwick, and on the Scotch borders, doing nothing to resist the advances of Bruce.
The barons now broke all measures of restraint. Provoked to exasperation by seeing the whole of their labours at once set aside, and the ruinous favourite restored to his whole fortune in defiance of them, they united in a most formidable conspiracy. At the head of it appeared his old enemy Lancaster; Guy, Earl of Warwick, "the black dog of Ardenne," entered into the alliance, according to one historian's expression, with "a furious and precipitate passion." Humphrey Bohun, Earl of Hereford, the constable, the Earl of Pembroke, and oven the Earl Wareune, who hitherto had supported, on most occasions, ​the royal cause, now joined zealously in the confederacy. Winchelsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, led on the clergy, who declared themselves in a body against the king and Gaveston. Such a coalition was able, at that time, to shake the throne itself. Lancaster, at the head of an army, marched hastily to York, whence the king made a precipitate retreat to Newcastle. Lancaster made a keen pursuit, and Edward had only just time to get on board a vessel at Tynemouth, and escape to Scarborough with his minion. There Edward left him while he again set out for York to endeavour to raise a body of troops. Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, whom Gaveston had ridiculed as "Joseph the Jew," laid brisk siege to the castle, which was in bad condition, and Gaveston, on the 19th of May, 1312, was obliged to capitulate. Both Pembroke and Lord Henry Percy pledged themselves that no harm should happen to him, and that he should be confined in his own castle of Wallingford. But, with all the boasts of chivalry, no great faith was to be reposed in such promises in those times, and they marched him away to the castle of Dedington, near Banbury, where Pembroke, on pretence of meeting to defend the castle, his countess somewhere in the neighbourhood, left him under a feeble guard. Pembroke, who was under oath, having thus on plausible grounds retired, Warwick, "the black dog of Ardenne," who had vowed to show Gaveston his teeth, now appeared upon the scene. He made a show of attacking the castle; the garrison refused to defend it—no doubt being well informed of the part they were to play—and in the morning the unhappy favourite was ordered suddenly to dress and descend into the court.
Edward II.
Surprise of Edinburgh Castle.
The king, as was to be expected, was thrown into violent grief at the news of the bloody death of his beloved friend. He roused himself to something like energy; vowed deadly vengeance on all concerned, and proceeded to raise and march troops for the purpose. The barons stood in arms to receive him, and for the remainder of the year they maintained a hostile attitude, but fought no battle. The king's resentment, as evanescent as his better purposes, then gave way; the barons consented to solicit his pardon on their knees; and this pretended humility flattered him into compliance. The plate and jewels of Gaveston were surrendered into his hands, and he was implored to confirm their deeds by proclaiming the late favourite a traitor. Here, however, Edward stood firm; he not only refused, but declined also to confirm the ordinances they had passed. But they had accomplished the great object of destroying the hated favourite, and therefore were the more willing not to press the king too closely on other points. All classes in the nation now began to cherish hopes that they might be led to chastise the Scots, and to win back, if possible, the brilliant conquests of Edward I.
For seven years the feeble and inglorious Edward II. had now suffered the loss of his great father's acquisitions in Scotland, and the reverses and disgraces of the English arms to remain unavenged. Occupied with the society of his favourite, the effeminate pleasures of the court, and the consequent contentions with his barons, he had allowed Bruce to proceed, with all the activity and resources of a great mind, to reassure the people of Scotland, retake the castles and forts, and strengthen himself at all points against attack. He had gradually risen from a condition the most perilous and enfeebled to one of great strength. His soldiers now held every stronghold except that of Stirling; and the governor of that last remaining fortress, by the permission of Bruce himself, appeared in London to inform the king that he had stipulated that if the castle wore not relieved by the feast of St. John the Baptist, the 24th of June, it should be surrendered.
Thus the reign of this weak monarch was the rescue of Scotland. Had not this spiritless king interposed between two such monarchs as the Edwards First and Third, it is impossible to suppose that Scotland could have maintained its independence. But, with the golden opportunity of an incompetent enemy. Providence had also sent Scotland one of the greatest men which it ever produced. Robert Bruce, driven to seek refuge in the most inaccessible wilds and mountains during the dominion of Edward I., and even pursued there by some of his own countrymen, such as the Lord of Lorn, and the relatives of the Red Comyn, no sooner saw the incapable ruler who had succeeded the "Hammer of Scotland," as Edward I. is styled on his tomb in Westminster Abbey, than he seized every favourable opportunity for regaining the castles and strongholds from the English. As fast as he mastered them he laid them in ruins, for he could not afford garrisons to defend them, and he knew that the feeling of the country was with him.
In the spring of 1308, the year following the death of Edward I., Bruce appeared to be sinking under the effects of the hardships and exposures which he had endured, combined with the almost superhuman exertions he had long made. He was in such a state of debility that his life was despaired of. Yet an English force under Mowbray, an Englishman, and John Comyn, Count of Buchan, having approached Inverury, in Aberdeenshire, Bruce caused himself to be lifted from his bed, and held by two men on his horse, and in that condition charged and routed his enemies. What might not be expected from resolution like that! Castle after castle fell into his hands. Aberdeen and Forfar were surprised the same year and razed. In 1309 and 1310 truces were entered into, but badly kept on both sides. In the autumn of that year Edward made an expedition into Scotland, but could not find an enemy, Bruce and his followers having adroitly disappeared, and, as Edward described it in a letter to the Pope, hidden themselves after the manner of foxes. But no sooner had Edward returned to London the following July, than Bruce actually pursued in the track of his army, and laid waste Durham. Returning laden with spoil, he next besieged and took Perth in January, 1312. He then made another excursion into the north of England, burned the towns of Corbridge and Hexham, in Northumberland; afterwards destroyed a great part of the city of Durham; then marched upon Chester and Carlisle, and was only induced to return to his own country by a payment of £8,000, raised in the four northern counties.
On the 7th of March of that year the important castle of Roxburgh was surprised and taken by Lord James Douglas. This was the same James Douglas who in 1307 had surprised his own castle of Douglas, which was held by Lord Clifford. He had contrived to get in on Palm Sunday, when the soldiers were in church. Having cut them to pieces, he and his followers found only a few soldiers in the castle cooking the dinner. They ate the dinner, and finding great stores for the garrison, threw them on a heap in the middle of the floor, knocked out the heads of the wine barrels, slew the soldiers, flung them on the pile, and so set fire to the castle, casting dead horses into the well to spoil it. The castle being restored by the English, Douglas again took and destroyed it, and vowed that he would thus avenge himself on any one who took possession of his house. There is a romantic but true story of a great and very beautiful heiress in England, who told her lovers that she would accept the man who would defend this castle of Douglas, now called Perilous Castle. This enterpise a brave young officer. Sir John Wilton, undertook, and maintained the castle for some time; but at length was lured out by a stratagem of Douglas and slain, a letter of the lady being found in his pocket.
​The manner in which Douglas surprised several of the most formidable castles of Scotland has all the wonder of romance about it. The castle of Roxburgh, which now fell into his hands, was only five miles from the English border, numerously garrisoned, and vigilantly watched, from the suprising successes of the Scots of late against such places, and Douglas was known to be in the neighbourhood. It was a holiday again, as at Douglas Castle; not now Palm Sunday, but Shrovetide. The soldiers were carousing, but had taken care to set watches on the battlements.
An Englishwoman, the wife of one of the officers, was sitting on the battlement with her child in her arms. She was looking out over the fields below, when she saw some black objects creeping along near the foot of the tower. The sentinel to whom she pointed them out said, "Pooh, they are only black cattle." So the lady sat still, and in a while began to sing to her child—
"Hush ye, hush ye, little pet ye; Hush ye, hush ye, do not fret ye;
The Black Douglas shall not get ye."
"You are not so sure of that," said a voice close beside her, and at the same time she felt her arm grasped by an iron glove, and, looking round in affright, she saw a tall, dark, powerful man—the Black Douglas himself. Another man was at the moment coming over the wall near the sentinel; this was one Simon Ledehouse. The sentinel perceiving him rushed at him with his lance, at the same time shouting an alarm. Ledehouse put aside the lance, and struck down the sentinel with his dagger. The Scots now came pouring pell-mell over the walls, and the castle was taken; but the Douglas protected the woman and child.
Still more remarkable was the surprise of the castle of Edinburgh only a week afterwards. Any one who has seen the lofty precipice on which this castle was situated would regard the scaling of that cliff as next to impossible, especially while a strong garrison was watching above. Tot this was done by Thomas Randolph—that same Randolph, the nephew of Bruce, who was taken prisoner at the battle of Methven, and who had now become Earl of Moray, and afterwards was regent of the kingdom. Randolph was informed by a man of the name of Francis that, in his youth, he had frequently descended, when a soldier in the garrison, by a secret path, to visit a girl that he was in love with in the Grass Market. He offered to show Randolph the way, who at once resolved to make the attempt, though a more perilous one could not be conceived, for if discovered by the garrison above while ascending the cliff, not a man of them would be left alive.
The brave Randolph selected thirty men for the enterprise, and came to the foot of the cliff on a dark night. Francis led the way; and a perilous way they found it—"a path," says Sir Walter Scott, "fitter for a cat than a man." A falling stone, or a word uttered, would have alarmed the watchmen, and brought instant destruction upon them. They, therefore, were obliged to creep on with the utmost caution; and when they had nearly reached the castle wall they could hear the guards going their rounds, and were obliged to lie close to escape attention. And hero they were startled by a man suddenly throwing a stone from the wall, and crying out, "Aha! I see you well." They believed they were discovered, but lay firm, and close, while the stone thundered down over their heads, and passed on. One movement, and they had been utterly destroyed, for the guard, only by throwing stones down, must have killed every one of them. But they were chosen as men who were prepared for anything. They lay quiet as the rocks themselves. The English soldier, as it proved, only did it in joke to alarm his comrades, and they, knowing that, all passed on. Then Randolph and his brave men, headed by Francis their guide—who proved himself a stout soldier—and Sir Andrew Grey, speedily fixed thou scaling ladders to the walls, which at that place were only about twice a man's height, suprised, and very easily destroyed the garrison, who, except the sentinels, were asleep and unarmed.
By such daring courage, and by a variety of stratagems, the strongest castles fell rapidly into their hands. Dumfries, Butel, Daiswinton, and Linlithgow swelled the list. The last was taken by the assistance of a farmer of the name of Binnock, or Binny, who used to supply the garrison with hay. This man concerted with the soldiers, his countrymen, that he should cut his soame—a yoke which fastened the horses to the cart—just as his loaded cart was in the gateway, and then crying, "Call all, call all!" the soldiers should rush in, as they did.
While Douglas, Randolph, and their heroic compeers were thus performing the most surprising feats of daring and of heroism, Bruce, who had now an effective army, marched to every point of the country where the enemy was to be found, defeating and chasing them away. He did not neglect to make a visit to the north, to the country of the Comyns, who had pursued him with peculiar animosity on account of his killing their relative, the Red Comyn, and who had joined the English with all their forces. Robert Bruce now ravaged their district, and slew them remorselessly, as the enemies of their country, causing more than thirty of them to be beheaded in one day, and thrown into a pit, called ever after "The grave of the headless Comyns." Neither did he forget John of Lorn, who had joined with the Comyns and the English, and had hunted him with bloodhounds. He penetrated into the very heart of Argyll, Lorn's country, beset him in the mountains, and was very near securing Lorn himself. He managed with difficulty to escape in a boat; but King Robert did not suffer his country to escape, for he bestowed a large portion of it on his own nephew. Sir Colin Campbell, and thus founded the great ducal family of Argyll.
Thus it came at last to the pass that, as we have described, the English had only the castle of Stirling left in all Scotland; and Sir Philip Mowbray, after a brave defence, had agreed to deliver that up if not relieved by a certain day. He had, as we have said, arrived in London with this message. Perhaps oven such a message as this, full of national disgrace, might not have moved Edward out of his epicurean listlessness, but it aroused the nobles. They exclaimed unanimously that it would be an eternal shame thus to let the great conquest of Edward I. fall out of their hands without a blow. It was therefore resolved that the king should lead an army to the rescue.
A royal summons was issued for all the military force of England to meet the king at Berwick on the 11th of ​June, 1314. The most warlike of the British subjects from the French provinces were called forth; troops were enlisted in Flanders; the Irish and Welsh were tempted in great numbers to Edward's standard by hopes of plunder; and altogether an army of not less than 100,000 men, including 40,000 cavalry—3,000 of of whom, mun and horse, were clad in complete armour—assembled. A large fleet attended to act in concert with the army; and at the head of this mighty force the king took his way towards Edinburgh, advancing along the east coast, and thence along the right bank of the Forth to Stirling.
Robert Bruce, who had been lying before Stirling awaiting the result of Sir Philip Mowbray's mission to London, now saw that the fate of the kingdom must be decided on or near that spot. His army was much inferior to the English one in numbers, amounting to between 30,000 and 40,000 men. But then they were tried troops, fighting for the very existence of their country, and under such leaders as Robert Bruce, Randolph, and Douglas—men whom they had followed into exploits almost miraculous. The English army was far better armed and provided, except in one particular, and that the most essential of all—a commander. Instead of that, instead of a man of courage, experience, and sagacity, they had a timid, effeminate puppet; and where so much depended on the commander-in-chief—even more than at the present day—that single circumstance was fatal.
Bruce made preparations for the decisive struggle with his usual ability. He had collected his forces in the forest called Torwood; but as he knew the superiority of the English, not merely in numbers, but in their heavy-armed cavalry (far better mounted and equipped than his own) and in their archers (the very best in the world), he determined to provide against these advantages. He therefore led his army into a plain on the south side of Stirling, called the New Park, close beneath which the English army would be obliged to pass through a swampy country, broken up with watercourses, while the Scots stood on firm, dry ground. With this morass in front, and the deep, woody, and broken banks of the little rivulet of Bannockburn on his right, so rocky that no troops could pass them, he took care to secure the more assailable ground on his left by digging a great number of pits, about knee-deep, which he covered with brush-wood, and over that with turf, so as to look like solid grassy ground. In those pits he is said by some writers to have fixed pointed stakes. The whole ground, says Barbour, the poetical chronicler, was like a honey-comb with the holes. Besides this, Bruce sought to disable the English cavalry by sowing the front of the battle-field with those cruel, three-pointed steel spikes called caltrops and crow-feet, which lamed and disabled the horses which trod upon them.
Bruce then divided his forces into four divisions. Of these he gave the command of the right wing, flanked by the Bannockburn, to his brother Edward: of the loft, near Stirling, to Randolph, who was posted near the church of St. Ninians, and had orders at all risks to prevent the English throwing succours into the city; Sir James Douglas and Walter the Steward commanded the centre; and Bruce headed the reserve in the rear, consisting of the men of Argyll, the islanders, and his own vassals of Carrick.
Douglas and Sir Robert Keith, mareschal of the Scottish army, were dispatched by King Robert to take a view of the English forces, now approaching from Falkirk. They returned saying the vast host approaching was one of the most beautiful and terrible sights imaginable; that the whole country appeared covered with moving troops; and that the number of banners, pennons, standards, flags, all of different kinds, made so gallant a show, that the bravest and most numerous army in Christendom might be alarmed to behold it coming against them. It was Sunday, and Barbour describes it as so bright that the armour of the English troops made the country seem all on fire. Never had England sent forth a more magnificent host, and never did one approach the battle-field with more imposing aspect; but the Lion-heart of the army, the terrible "Hammer of Scotland," was no longer there.
As the army drew in sight, Edward sent forward Lord Clifford with 8OO horse to endeavour to gain the castle by a circuitous route, hidden by rising grounds from Bruce's left wing. They had already passed the Scottish line when Bruce was the first to descry them. "See, Randolph," he cried, riding up to him, "there is a rose fallen from your chaplet—you have suffered the enemy to pass!" Randolph made no reply, but rushed upon Clifford with little more than half his number. The English wheeled round to charge and to encompass the little band of Scots, but Randolph drew them up back to back, and they defended themselves valiantly. Douglas, who saw the perilous position of Randolph, asked to be allowed to ride up to his relief. "No," replied the king, "let Randolph redeem his own fault." But the danger became so imminent, that Douglas exclaimed, "So please you, my liege, I must aid Randolph; I cannot stand idle and see him perish." He therefore rode off with a strong detachment, but seeing, as he drew near, that the English were giving way, he cried, "Halt! Randolph has gained the day: let us not lessen his glory by approaching the field." A noble sentiment, for Randolph and Douglas were always striving which should rise the highest in the nation.
Meanwhile, the van of the English army approached the front of the Scottish host; and they beheld King Robert mounted on a small palfrey instead of his great war-horse, for he did not expect the battle that evening. He was riding up and down the ranks of his men, putting them in order, with a steel battle-axe in his hand, and a helmet on his head surmounted with a crown of gold. Some of the bravest knights of the English army rode out in front, to see what the Scots were doing; and Bruce also advanced a little before his own men to take a nearer view of them. Sir Henry Bohun, an English knight, mounted on a heavy war-horse, armed at all points, thought this an excellent opportunity to earn great renown, and put an end to the war at a stroke, by killing Robert Bruce. He therefore charged furiously upon him, trusting with his lance to bear him to the ground, poorly mounted as he was. King Robert awaited him with the most profound composure; and, as he drew near, suddenly turned his pony aside, so that Bohun missed him with the point of his lance, and was in the act of being ​carried past him by his horse. Robert Bruce, rising in his stirrups as the knight was passing, dealt him such a blow on the head with his battle-axe, that it broke to pieces his iron helmet as if it had been a nutshell, and hurled him dead to the ground. The English knights, astonished at the act, retired to the main body; and King Robert's friends blamed him for exposing himself and the safety of the army to such risks: but he himself only continued to look at his weapon, saying, "I have broken my good battle-axe."
The next morning the battle began in terrible earnest. The English, as they approached, saw the Abbot of Inchaffray walking barefoot through the Scottish ranks, and exhorting the soldiers to fight bravely for their freedom. As he passed they knelt and prayed for victory. King Edward, seeing this, cried out, "See! they kneel down; they are asking forgiveness!" "Yes," replied the bold Baron Ingelram de Umphraville; "but they ask it of God, not of us; these men will conquer or die upon the field."
The main body of the army, under the conduct of the king himself, advanced in a long, dense column upon the Scottish line; but they failed to break it by the shook, and repeated renewals of the charge told more sensibly on the assailants than on the assailed. The English were broken at every fresh collision; the Scots stood like a range of rocks. Every part of the Scottish army was brought into play, while the majority of the English never came in contact with the enemy. The brave Randolph led up the left wing to the support of the assaulted centre, till he appeared surrounded and lost in an ocean of foes. On the other hand, the Earls of Hereford and Gloucester made a fierce charge of cavalry on the right wing, commanded by Edward Bruce, but were received by those treacherous pitfalls, in which their horses were overthrown in confusion, and the riders, falling in their heavy armour, were unable to extricate themselves. Dreadful then was the slaughter; and amongst the rest Gloucester, the king's nephew, not wearing his armorial bearings, and not, therefore, being recognised, was cut to pieces in the mêlée.
The English archers poured their arrows thick as hail upon the main body, and might, as at Falkirk, have decided the day; but Bruce, having calculated on this, sent Sir Robert Keith, the mareschal, with a small body of horse, to take them in flank; and as the archers had no weapons for close quarters, the Scottish horsemen, dashing headlong among them, cut them down in great numbers, and threw them into total confusion.
Meanwhile Douglas and the Steward encouraged their men in the centre by their valiant deeds and the confidence in their great fame, and the battle became general along the whole Scottish line. The moment in which Bruce saw that his detachment of horse had disordered the archers, he advanced with his reserve, and the whole Scotch front pressed upon the already hesitating English. At this critical moment an event occurred which decided the victory. Bruce had posted the servants and attendants of the Scottish camp behind a hill in the rear of the army. Some writers give him credit for planning what took place, and assert that he had furnished them for that purpose with banners, to represent a second army. Others, and amongst them Sir Walter Scott, attribute the appearance of those men simply to observing that their army was evidently gaining on the foe, and were therefore eager to have their share of the victory and the booty. Be this as it may, suddenly the English saw a body of men coming rapidly over the hill, ever since called the Gillies', or Servants' Hill, from this circumstance. Supposing this to be a fresh army, they at once lost heart and broke, while Bruce, raising his war-cry, rushed with new fury against the failing ranks. The king was the first to put spurs to his horse and fly. A valiant knight, Sir Giles de Argentine, who had won great renown in Palestine, assisted the king out of the press; but he then turned, saying, "It is not my custom to fly"—a keen reproof to the cowardly monarch, if he could have felt anything but fear—and dashing, with the cry of "Argentine! Argentine!" into the thickest of the Scottish ranks, was killed.
The fugitive king tied to the gates of Stirling Castle, and entreated admittance; but the brave Sir Philip Mowbray reminding him that he was pledged to surrender the castle if it were not relieved that very day, Edward was obliged to fly through the Torwood. Douglas was already pressing hotly after him; and meeting with Sir Lawrence Abernethy—a Scottish knight hitherto in the English interest, and even now on his way to the English army—he carried the not unwilling knight and his twenty horsemen along with him. Douglas and Abernethy pursued the king at full gallop, and never ceased the chase till they reached Dunbar, sixty miles off, where Edward narrowly escaped into the castle, still held by an English ally, Patrick, Earl of March. Thence the king escaped by a small fishing skiff to England, leaving his splendid army, a great part of it to utter destruction. 50,000 of the English were said to have been killed or taken prisoners, and the remnant of the army was pursued as far as Berwick, ninety miles distant. Of those who fell there have been said to be twenty-seven barons and bannerets, including Gloucester, a prince of the blood, 200 knights, 700 esquires, and 30,000 of inferior rank. Twenty-two barons and bannerets were taken, and sixty knights; and an English historian has asserted, that if the chariots, baggage wagons, &c., that were taken, loaded with military stores and booty, had been drawn out in single lino, they would have reached sixty leagues. Besides this, the ransom of so many distinguished men was a grand source of wealth to the victorious army. The losses of the Scotch were comparatively trivial, Sir William Vipont and Sir William Ross being the only persons of note slain.
Such was the decisive battle of Bannockburn, which has ever since been celebrated in song and story as one of the proudest triumphs in Scottish history. It at once established the independence of Scotland. "The English," says Sir Walter Scott, "never before or afterwards, whether in France or Scotland, lost so dreadful a battle as that of Bannockburn, nor did the Scots ever gain one of the same importance." Bruce was at once elevated from the condition of an exile, hunted by his enemies with bloodhounds like a beast of the chase, and placed firmly on the throne of his native land—one of the wisest and bravest kings who ever sat there. The moral effect of this battle was almost magical. Stirling Castle was at once surrendered, according to stipulation. Bothwell Castle, in which the Earl of Hereford had shut himself ​up, soon after yielded to Edward Bruce, and Hereford was exchanged for the wife, sister, and daughter of the King of Scots, who had been detained eight years in England, as well as for the Bishop of Glasgow and the Earl of Mar. The triumphant Scots marched into England, ravaged Northumberland, levied tribute on Durham, wasted the country to the very gates of York, and going westward, reached Appleby in Westmoreland, whence they returned home laden with spoil. The English were become thoroughly demoralised by their great overthrow, and numbers fled at the approach of the merest handful of Scots. "O day of vengeance and of misfortune!" says the monk of Malmesbury; "day of disgrace and perdition! unworthy to be included in the circle of the year, which tarnished the fame of England, and enriched the Scots with the plunder of the precious stuffs of our nation to the extent of £200,000"—nearly three millions of our money.
Encouraged by this panic, the Scots made fresh incursions that autumn and the following summer, but received, ultimately, some checks at Carlisle and Berwick. But, perhaps, more than from this, the security of England was purchased by the ill-fortune of Ireland; for in May, 1315, the Irish, taking also advantage of the reverses of England, invited Edward Bruce to come over, drive out the English, and become their king. Edward Bruce caught at the offer with avidity, for he was fond of battle and adventure, and ambitious of fame and power. He was brave but rash. He took over 6,000 men, and was joined by several of the Irish chiefs on landing at Carrickfergus. The Scots fought with various success, and penetrated far into Ireland. In the following spring, Edward Bruce was crowned King of Ireland in Ulster, and Robert Bruce also went over to support his claim with fresh forces, making the Scottish army about 20.000 men. For another year the two brothers continued their adventure, marching on Dublin, to which the citizens set fire, and laid waste the suburbs, so that they wore obliged to move on. They marched south in hope of receiving co-operation from the Irish of Munster and Connaught, but were disappointed, and involved in imminent danger from an English army of 30,000 men at Kilkenny.
The English, meantime, seized the opportunity of the absence of the King of Scots, and made fresh inroads into Scotland. This compelled his speedy return, when, in March, 1318, he made himself master of Berwick, and revenged himself on the English by again marching into their northern counties, taking the castles of Wark, Harbottle, and Mitford in Northumberland; and in a second raid in Yorkshire burning Noithallerton, Boroughbridge, Scarborough, and Skipton, besides levying 1,000 marks on Papon, and carrying off much booty. But ill-fortune soon overtook his brother Edward in Ireland, where he had left him. He engaged Sir Piers de Birmingham at Fagher, near Dundalk, and was left dead on the field, with 2,000 of his soldiers. The efforts of the Scots for three years to erect a kingdom in Ireland thus vanished for ever, leaving scarcely a trace. Sir Piers de Birmingham presented the head of Edward Bruce to the King of England, who made him, in recompense, Earl of Louth.
These reverses of the Scots excited Edward of Caernarvon to one more effort for the recovery of Scotland. He assembled a numerous force, and besieged Berwick on the 7th of September, 1319, both by sea and land. It made a vigorous resistance; and Randolph and Douglas, to create a diversion, invaded the western marches with a force of 13,000 men. They made a push for York, to secure the queen, but failed. They then committed dreadful ravages in Yorkshire, and were encountered by an undisciplined mob led on by the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of Ely. This rude assemblage they routed at Mitton, on the Swale, and slew about 4,000, chiefly peasants, but amongst them 300 churchmen with surplices over their armour; whence this battle, in allusion to so many shaven crowns in it, was called the Chapter of Mitton. Edward at length raised the siege of Berwick, and marched to intercept the Scots, but not before they had burnt and destroyed eighty-four towns and villages, and done incredible damage. On the approach of the king they warily withdrew, and finished their successful raid by a truce for two years.