Goliath vs David: The return of yet another king
Aided by the French king, David II returned to Scotland in 1341, having reached the majority age of eighteen, and everything was roses as all the Scots accepted him. Well, not quite. Not even close actually. Almost on his arrival he ran into opposition, and even those who were ready to support him turned out to be just as ready to oppose him if they didn’t get what they wanted. Eager to impose his authority, the young king made a few decisions that didn’t go down too well, and would help Edward III by causing trouble for David without his having to take a hand in things. He had in fact been busy fighting Philip’s forces, and had won a major victory, so major in fact that the French king feared an English invasion, and asked David to instead invade England, to draw Edward’s attention and forces away from him. David duly obliged.
Invasion! VII - Done up like a kipper
Despite all the infighting and doubt within his people, the Scottish king was able to gather together a pretty massive force of 12,000 men and headed south. Delays in preparation though allowed the English time to muster and they were ready for him when he attacked. They met in what would be David’s first battle with the English king, and also turned out to be his first defeat.
The Battle of Neville’s Cross
With the bulk of Edward’s forces fighting in Normandy, Philip VI advised David that he would have an easy time of it, catching the English both unawares and under-manned, calling England at the time a “defencess void”. This would, however, not turn out to be the case. The main problem here was that the English were expecting this; the Scots themselves had said they would break the truce (which none of the three nations honoured in any way and was more or less just words on a page if anything) as soon as France told them to, so it was a matter of when rather than if. Relying on the (faulty) intelligence from the French court, David marched south and was more than surprised when William Douglas almost literally stumbled over the army assembled by the Archbishop of York, in the process losing more than half his men. Reporting to David at the monastery they were in the process of sacking, Douglas gave him the news and David rode to meet the English.
The Archbishop’s force had been swelled by a further 3,000 men from Yorkshire, now numbering about 7,000 in all, and Lord Ralph Neville took command of the whole army. David took the higher ground, as the kings and leaders before him had always done, and relied on his schilltrons, with axemen and even cavalry officers in front of them. His cause was not helped by the sudden and cowardly desertion of two of his commanders, Robert Stewart, the illegitimate son of the Bruce, and the Earl of March, Patrick Dunbar, leaving David’s flank very much exposed and no doubt plunging Scottish morale into the depths of despair.
Perhaps because of terrain not being in their favour, perhaps because the battle had been thrust upon them rather than their being able to prepare for it, or perhaps even due to David’s being, after all, a young man, untested in battle-hardened conditions - and certainly no thanks to the desertion of the two commanders - despite their (originally) superior numbers the Scots were routed, and David himself badly wounded and captured by the English.
Most of the Scottish military hierarchy and nobles were either killed or captured, and the Battle of Neville’s Cross was a serious blot on the new king’s copybook; his first chance to show his people what he could do, and it resulted in what can only be termed a massacre, decimating the Scottish nobility and leading to the imprisonment of their king.
Fail.
Epic fail.
Some noteworthy points before we go on. How true some of this is I don’t know, but accounts say that King David hid after the battle, taking refuge under a bridge, and was only discovered when his reflection was seen in the water flowing under the bridge. He subsequently did at least have enough fight in him to knock the teeth out of one of his captors. During the battle he took arrows in the face, and though removed, parts of them remained and gave him headaches for the rest of his life, as well as, presumably, being a constant reminder of his abject failure as a leader.
Although nobles were traditionally ransomed, Edward wanted to break the Scottish monarchy and so refused to allow many of the more high-profile prisoners be ransomed, keeping them captive instead. Much of this did not go down well with his own people, for if there is one thing that trumps loyalty to the king it is loyalty to the pocket, and take money out of that pocket and you may very well be storing up trouble for yourself. Many lower-value prisoners were executed out of hand, but Edward had a special hatred for the Earl of Menteith, John Graham, who had previously sworn fealty to the English king. Seeing this as treason, Edward had Menteith tried and condemned as a traitor, then drawn, hanged, beheaded and quartered.
The Holy Rood of St. Margaret, originally taken by Edward I and brought to England, later restored to Scotland, was again taken from David and given to Durham Cathedral.
War is over, if you want it - The end of the Second War of Scottish Independence
With the imprisonment of David went the last real hope of Scotland’s achieving independence from England. Edward Bailiol popped up again like a bad penny, but Edward III didn’t really have much time for him, trying instead to convince the captive David to nominate one of his own sons as his heir, which would have solidified England’s hold over Scotland. David himself, at a mere eighteen years old, had no children, but refused constantly to allow this. He must have wished he had stayed in France! Mind you, the French were not doing so well either, as Edward beat them back on their native soil. That’s not really relevant though to the history here, so we won’t be going into that (don’t want to stray too far off the beaten track, and we’ve wandered a long way already).
Perhaps oddly, considering they ran from battle (though probably few survived to tell the tale, and those who did, with their king defeated and a prisoner of the English, probably knew to keep their mouths shut) the Scottish then rallied behind Robert Stewart and Patrick Dunbar, while Edward tried unsuccessfully to get David to see sense and give him Scotland. Not sure why he thought the king would do this, given how hard he and his predecessors had fought to keep their country free of English influence, but he seems to have made a good fist of it, even adding a ransom demand into the bargain, all of which were turned down. David was even allowed leave England to supposedly ratify a treaty whereby Scotland would become a fief, or dependent kingdom, of England, but the parliament decided against it, literally ruling that the freedom of their king was less important than the freedom of the nation, and sent him back with a thanks but no thanks message.
Invasion! VIII - The Final Countdown
While Edward was again away dealing with those pesky French, Stewart and Dunbar, with French support and encouragement, launched another invasion of England, which was again poorly-defended, most of its army having joined their king in the battle against France. They took the town of Berwick, and when Edward heard what had happened he returned to England as soon as he could, invaded Scotland again, retook the castle and kicked the Scots out. He then went on something of a rampage, destroying Edinburgh and burning most of Lothian. But in the end he realised he wasn’t really going to subdue Scotland, and would have to settle for a treaty instead.
The end of the second war of Scottish independence reads to me not so much of triumph but of exhausted acceptance, on both sides. For over seventy years, the two nations had fought, made war, invaded each other, and now, finally, at the end, with victory against the French seeming more in his grasp than ever and Scotland divided with the capture of their king, Edward realised it was time to draw a line under this long conflict. In a treaty which probably satisfied nobody, but did the job, and bringing it all back to where it both started and eventually ended, the Treaty of Berwick was signed in 1357. David was released to go home to Scotland, Edward had now only to fight a war on one front, and Edward Bailiol, the eternal fly in the ointment of the Scottish monarchy, was old and ill, and would die ten years later, childless and mostly forgotten.