Scotland’s Second War of Independence, part 2: intensification and insurrection, 1333-37
Continuing our series on the Second War of Independence,we explore the intervention of Edward III of England, whose activities pushed the fortunes of the Bruce Scots to their lowest ebb
Continuing our series on the Second War of Independence, Dr Iain A. MacInnes explores the intervention of Edward III of England, whose activities pushed the fortunes of the Bruce Scots to their lowest ebb.
Edward III arrived at Berwick-upon-Tweed in May 1333 with a large English army at his back.The combined Disinherited and English forces made several assaults on the town, but its defences – built by Edward I and improved by Robert I – successfully held out. However, attacks by both land and sea wearied the garrison, and attempts at beating back the assaults had resulted in significant damage to the town. Berwick’s citizens also appear to have been fearful of what would happen to them if the English succeeded in forcing entry. Medieval laws of war allowed for almost any action against a populace that had refused surrender, and which was taken by storm, and as Walter Bower’s Scotichronicon suggests, ‘the townspeople very much feared the ferocity of King Edward’. As a result, negotiations were entered into between the residents and the English king. The agreement reached stated that if a Bruce Scottish army did not come to the rescue of Berwick by 11 July 1333, then it would surrender. Hostages, including the constable’s son, were given over to ensure that the agreement was observed.
In a role reversal of the actions that preceded the battle of Bannockburn (1314), it was the turn of the Bruce Scots to mount an expedition to relieve a besieged fortification.The new guardian, Archibald Douglas, had options. He could, for example, have chosen to relinquish Berwick. But the town was a major economic hub and its loss would have had severe financial ramifications for the Scottish government. Moreover, its loss would have been a blow to Scotland’s prestige.The capture and retention of Berwick had been one of the major achievements of Robert I’s reign.To abandon it to its fate would have undone the work of the previous conflict. Following the defeats of 1332, it would also reinforce the failure of the Bruce leadership to face this most recent challenge. As a result, then, Douglas gathered a large Scottish army, but instead of heading for Berwick, he instead crossed the Tweed further upriver, and took his army into England.
Repeating the tactics of Douglas’s half-brother, James Douglas, when Berwick had been besieged by English
The English chronicle of Meaux Abbey suggested that, on the day after the battle, Edward III ordered 100 Scots to be beheaded, presumably for treason in fighting against their king, Edward Balliol
forces in 1319, Archibald Douglas took his troops into Northumberland. Forming up on the south side of the Tweed, the Scots displayed the might of their arrayed forces to the Disinherited-English army on the north bank, before heading off on a destructive campaign through the English north.The tactic was sound. The English and Disinherited forces contained a large number of northern English nobles.The sight of their lands in flames, with the smoke clearly visible from their positions at Berwick, was intended to pressure them into leaving the siege to protect their own possessions.This had worked successfully in 1319, but Edward
III was not his father and his ability to ensure that his nobles remained committed to the siege was impressive. Still, the Bruce Scots also successfully managed to send supplies and troops across the broken bridge over the Tweed and into Berwick. As a result, the townspeople informed Edward III that, as per their agreement, the town had been relieved.
The battle of Halidon Hill
The English king was not, however, going to concede to some element of trickery that he felt was against the strict terms he had imposed on Berwick. As a result, he hanged Thomas Seton, son of the town’s constable and one of the hostages previously handed over to ensure that both sides kept to the agreement, in sight of his parents.The king also threatened to execute every other hostage at his disposal. As a result, the townspeople entered into further negotiations with Edward III that resulted in a demand that Berwick be relieved by 19 July.The town’s citizens were given leave to send men south to find the Bruce army and to deliver to its leaders the terms of this new agreement.The army was duly located near Morpeth, almost 50 miles south of Berwick. Archibald Douglas was again faced with a choice: continue his attack on northern England and hope that it would have an impact on Edward III’s decision-making; or take his army north to relieve the town. In the end, he chose the latter.
While Douglas arrived ahead of the deadline for Berwick’s relief, the arrival of the Bruce army would not be allowed to be the end of things. Arrayed to the north-west of the town, on Halidon Hill, was the EnglishDisinherited army in full array.While the Bruce Scots attempted to take up their own defensive position, the onus was on them to go on the offensive to force the enemy army away from Berwick, and so they had to abandon their position and advance on Edward III’s forces.The intervening ground was marshy and sapped the strength from the Bruce forces.They then had to proceed up the steep incline of Halidon Hill itself. All the while they were, as they had been at Dupplin Moor, exposed to incessant archery fire.The English Lanercost Chronicle described how the Scots ‘were so grievously wounded in the face and blinded by the host of English archery… that they were helpless, and quickly began to turn away from the arrow flights and to fall’. Despite these difficulties, the Bruce army reached the Disinherited-English line and fierce hand-to-hand fighting ensued. Edward Balliol’s division was reportedly pushed backwards by the intensity of the Bruce assault. But the other Bruce divisions were held in position by a solid defensive line that showed little further sign of collapse, and the archers on the flanks continued their fire, threatening another Dupplin Moor. In the end the pressure was too much, and the Bruce Scots broke.
Their enemies fleeing northwards, the English and Disinherited nobles took the opportunity to mount their horses and chase down the Bruce Scots. Bower described what followed as ‘pitiful slaughter, astonishing flight, and the capture of Scots on an indescribable scale’. Amongst the roll call of noble dead was the guardian, Archibald Douglas. The English chronicle of Meaux Abbey suggested that, on the day after the battle, Edward III ordered 100 Scots to be beheaded, presumably for treason in fighting against their king, Edward Balliol.This did not extend to the noble captives, who were worth a valuable ransom. But the result of the battle of Halidon Hill was a second catastrophic defeat for Bruce forces in less than a year, the loss of another guardian, and the loss of Berwick-upon-Tweed itself. It also left Scotland open once more to an unopposed Disinherited advance. Balliol took his forces north and captured Perth. His Disinherited allies proceeded to their own territories to make good on their claims. And the few Bruce partisans remaining were pushed to the margins of the realm as many others simply submitted to Balliol as king.
Edward III triumphant
These were the darkest of days for those who still supported the young David II. Indeed, the situation was so bleak that the decision was made to send the young king into exile in France for his own safety. David and his retinue took the dangerous sea journey from Dumbarton Castle in 1334, but successfully made their way to the continent where they were welcomed by Philip VI of France, and the Scottish court-in-exile was established at Château Gaillard in Normandy. Still, back in Scotland the Bruce Scots continued to show a remarkable ability to recover from significant defeat to challenge the new order. Edward Balliol appears to have been facing unrest from as early as February 1334. He was also forced into a corner by his relationship with
Edward III. For the erstwhile Scottish king had previously agreed the price of English military support at the cost of £2,000 worth of Scottish land.
In the aftermath of the Disinherited success of 1333-34, Edward III looked to collect on his promised reward.
As a result, the medieval sheriffdoms of Berwick, Roxburgh, Selkirk, Edinburgh, Peebles and Dumfries were annexed by the English crown and became, in effect, part of England. English sheriffs were despatched to oversee the transition and to commence collection of taxes and other dues for the English treasury.The rest of Scotland was left to the reign of King Edward and his Disinherited supporters. But all was not well here either, and unrest amongst the Disinherited leadership resulted in a large-scale fall-out and withdrawal of individual leaders to their own lands.
Balliol triumphant
This situation presented the Bruce Scots with an opportunity, and they were quick to take it. Robert the Steward despatched forces loyal to him across the Clyde to devastate Clydesdale, Renfrewshire, Carrick and Cunningham. Rebellion broke out in Cowal, Annandale and Kyle, and Bruce forces under the leadership of the new co-guardians, the Steward and John Randolph, earl of Moray, descended upon Galloway.The war being fought was one for the loyalty and allegiance of the people of Scotland. But it was not a war for hearts and minds. Instead, the Bruce Scots devastated these areas of Scotland to show their residents that they remained a potent threat, that they were the ones in power, and that support for their cause was essential if such destruction were to stop. The ferocity of such action is suggested by Bower’s description of the Steward’s attacks on his own territories, where his men:
Scattered everywhere as they laid the country waste, plundered for spoils, led men away as prisoners or brought them over to the Scottish side. And thus within a short time they brought under their subjection the lower part of Clydesdale and its inhabitants, regardless of whether they were willing or not.
Several members of the Disinherited leadership were captured during these campaigns and later in 1334 in separate encounters across the kingdom. As a result, Edward Balliol was forced to flee Scotland once more and took refuge at English-held Berwick.
Edward III’s response was to shore up the English-held south after it too had come under attack from Bruce forces in 1334. He campaigned in the border region over the winter of 1334-35, refortified Roxburgh Castle, and sent his forces across southern Scotland in a show of force to remind the people of the region which side still possessed the military dominance. This was a precursor to a large-scale and complex campaign in summer 1335 which appears to have been intended to overawe the Scots into submission.The summer invasion was also able to take advantage of internal divisions, this time within the Bruce camp.The co-guardians – Robert the Steward and John Randolph – were at loggerheads over the direction of the war. Additionally, a recent convert to the Bruce cause – the Disinherited lord, David Strathbogie, titular earl
of Atholl – also appears to have been fomenting dissent within the Bruce camp.There was, then, a less unified Bruce response to the two-pronged English and Disinherited invasion that crossed the border at Carlisle and Berwick before combining forces at Glasgow and heading north to Perth.
As part of the wider campaign, forces from Ireland sailed across the Irish Sea and raided the west coast, targeting those areas which had risen in rebellion the year before. Balliol took troops north from Perth and may have penetrated into the highland region, while David Strathbogie, now returned to his previous allegiance, campaigned in the northeast. Bruce attempts to pick off parts of the English force on its progress failed, and John Randolph was himself captured after being ambushed by border forces. He spent the next several years in captivity as Scotland lost yet another guardian. And worse was to follow as many Bruce nobles submitted to Edward III and Edward Balliol, including Robert the Steward. With one guardian in captivity, and another having surrendered, 1335 was probably as close as Scotland came to capitulating and giving in to the reality of a kingdom governed by the two Edwards.
Bruce hold-outs
Once again, however, there remained a few hold-outs who continued the fight.
Andrew Murray, inexplicably released by Edward III in 1334, had returned to Scotland in that year and resumed his position as guardian after the Steward’s surrender. It was Murray who led the relief of Kildrummy Castle, besieged by Strathbogie, in the autumn of 1335 and who led the forces that defeated and killed the troublesome earl of Atholl in battle at Culblean (Mar), on St Andrew’s day.This small-scale battle may be overlooked, but it was of immediate and longer-term importance. It emphasised the ongoing ability of the Bruce Scots to recover from defeat. It held out the possibility yet again of a Bruce recovery. And it ended the career of Strathbogie, a dangerous figure whose military and political ability made him a serious opponent who threatened the loss of northeast Scotland as a recruiting area for Bruce forces.
Andrew Murray and his commanders followed up this victory by besieging Disinherited-held castles in Scotland north of the Englishoccupied zone, but the two Edwards returned again in the summer of 1336 with another large-scale invasion of Scotland. More complicated than the last, this invasion involved multiple forces entering Scotland by land and sea. Ultimately, it looks like the last great effort by Edward III to achieve some level of success in Scotland. But at first, the English king was not involved personally in the effort. Instead, he stayed in England, concerned that Scotland’s ally, France, was about to launch a naval attack against the south coast. In his place, Edward Balliol led another large English army north in May.This again split in two and progressed through Scotland on a destructive campaign, hoping to lure the Bruce Scots into another confrontation.
Andrew Murray and his commanders had other ideas.They picked away at the edges of the English army, ambushing foraging forces when they detached from the main host. Such attacks did little to stop the advance, however, and having recombined their forces around Stirling, the Disinherited-English army progressed to Perth to refortify the town. At the same time, another English force had left England by sea and sailed to Aberdeen. Under the command of Thomas Roslin, these men were apparently sent to establish a forward operating base for the English in northeast Scotland.They were met by local forces at Aberdeen, where a skirmish ensued and their commander was killed. Still, they overcame the forces arrayed against them and proceeded to Dunottar Castle, which they worked on refortifying.
Edward III joined the activity in June 1336, riding north with a small force and catching up with his army at Perth. After several weeks of local operations, Edward III then undertook a rapid campaign through northern Scotland. Heading north from Perth, he progressed through Badenoch to relieve the Disinherited forces besieged in Lochindorb Castle. In so doing he rescued the English noblewoman, Katherine Beaumont, widow of David Strathbogie, but the main point of this action may again have been an attempt to draw the Bruce Scots into battle. Andrew Murray had been in charge of the Lochindorb siege and the actions of the English-Disinherited forces in the period that followed appear to have been an attempt either to draw him out or to force him into a trap.
Edward III proceeded through Moray and into Aberdeenshire on a destructive chevauchée, a fast-moving campaign of destruction through enemy territory. He spent the best part of three days ruining Aberdeen,
before returning to Perth once more, ambushed by Bruce forces as he went. Andrew Murray avoided this campaign and reappeared in the south, but it is at this point that another English force invaded Scotland. Led by the king’s brother, John of Eltham, it campaigned destructively in the southwest before heading north to join Edward III at Perth. Eltham died soon after, leading to salacious but untrue reports by Scottish chroniclers that Edward III had slain his brother in a fit of pique.
What the English king did do was oversee improved defences at various sites, including Roxburgh, Stirling and several castles in Fife.The inference here is that Edward III was looking to preserve what he and his allies already had, and to make life more difficult for the Bruce Scots. After a long campaigning season, Edward III returned to England in September 1336.The Bruce Scots were quick to respond, raiding into northeast Scotland and undoing the work of refortification and allegiance-building that the English king had undertaken in that region. As before, much of this Bruce effort involved violent warfare, ravaging Scottish territory to enforce allegiance and loyalty to David II in the face of an active Balliol/English alternative. As Bower described, the cost of such warfare were severe, and ‘as a result of continuous plundering by both sides, the whole land of Gowrie, Angus and the
Mearns was reduced to almost irreparable devastation’.
English retrenchment
In response, Edward III returned to defend his efforts, although he only proceeded as far north as Stirling. Turning south once more, he repaired and regarrisoned Bothwell Castle, committed more repairs at Roxburgh Castle, and returned to England. Edward Balliol was left in the dubious safety of Perth.The 1336 campaign was arguably the most complex, if not the largest, attempt made by the two Edwards to solve the problem of how to conquer Scotland. But it was a problem that lacked an obvious solution. And the reality was that the war was costing the English treasury a fortune, without much in the way of obvious results. Edward Balliol looked less and less like a real king of Scots. And Edward III’s attention was increasingly distracted by growing tensions with France.While he did not know it, the Hundred Years War was looming over the horizon, and as France increasingly became an object of interest, Scotland was of far less importance.
This perhaps explains the English campaigns of 1337, which were relative irrelevances in comparison to those of the previous two years.They were also largely launched in response to Bruce activity, which was now very much on the front foot. Bruce forces spent the first few months of 1337 undermining Edward III’s castle strategy of the previous year, besieging and capturing various Disinherited/Englishheld fortifications.They also targeted areas of Disinherited influence, including Fife and Galloway, for more destructive raiding and Edward III himself was forced to ride north in June as Stirling Castle was under serious threat from a Bruce siege.
But this small-scale intervention was a stop-gap measure aimed at avoiding a catastrophic loss. Edward III left soon after and major English intervention in Scotland did not occur again until September, in a much-delayed invasion led not by the king, but by the earl of Warwick. Restricted in its movements by the weather, this invasion did little more than to reinforce English lordship in the ceded south. Indeed, English activity in this period – or its lack – appears to have encouraged yet more confidence in the Bruce Scots, who for the first time since 1333 took the war across the border. A smallscale raid in August was followed by a larger incursion in the wake of Warwick’s withdrawal south which committed large-scale devastation in Northumberland. A further raid into Cumberland in October undertook yet more destruction in the English north, threatening even Carlisle, and returned to Scotland with a large collection of English cattle as booty. When Edinburgh Castle was besieged by the Bruce Scots in the same month, it was not Edward III that rode to its rescue but hastily arrayed
levies from northern England.
Conclusion
The end of 1337 showed that, in just a few short years, the balance of power in the war had changed completely. From the dark days of 1333 and 1335, the Bruce Scots had staged a remarkable recovery. Much was still to be achieved: towns and castles in Scotland remained in Disinherited-English hands; and the allegiance of various regions of Scotland still had to be won. But the ambition and confidence of the Bruce Scots is clear to see in expansion of the war. By going on the offensive, the Bruce Scots reinforced to the English the repercussions of the war they were fighting in Scotland, which went beyond the simple financial costs of paying soldiers and garrisons.The return of active conflict to northern England, repeating the actions of the 1310s and 1320s, was a psychological blow to these communities and one that would have a cumulative effect as these raids increased. Ultimately, however, Edward III was not quite finished with Scotland yet. By the end of 1337 he was seeking alliances with continental princes and in the midst of planning a military expedition to the continent as the war of words with France increasingly looked like becoming a military confrontation. But one last large-scale effort would be made in Scotland, and this was focused on the siege of Dunbar Castle.