[1371-1377 A.D.] family in the possession of the throne, in regulating the expenses of the royal household, and in introducing substantial reforms into the administration of justice. These objects constituted the main business of two parliaments held in March, 1371, and April, 1373. Little else occurred to arrest the pen of the historian until the death of Edward III of England, which occurred on June 1st, 1377. This event tended to increase the chances of peace between the two kingdoms, and there can be little doubt that the wishes of the two governments were directed towards a friendly alliance. But in Scotland, at least, the king had at this time but a precarious power over his subjects.

THE TURBULENT NOBILITY AND THE BORDER FEUDS

During the troubles which had torn the kingdom to pieces since the death of Robert Bruce, the nobles had been increasing in power and turbulence, and many of them had individually the force and the will to involve their country in hostilities whenever it suited their interests or gratified their revenge. The latter feeling gave rise, soon after the accession of Richard II to the English throne, to an outrage of a very atrocious character. The castle of Roxburgh was held by an English garrison, and the town was much frequented at this time by Englishmen. There was held at Roxburgh a rather celebrated fair on the feast of St. Lawrence, August 10th. At this fair, in 1376, one of the retainers of the earl of March was slain by some Englishmen in one of the brawls so frequent on such occasions. The earl, who was one of the most powerful and turbulent of the Scottish nobles, demanded satisfaction from the garrison, with a threat that if it was not given, he, individually, would no longer respect the truce. The threat and demand were slighted, and a whole year passed by without any further notice being taken of the matter. At length the fair of St. Lawrence came round again, and English merchants and traders crowded into the town, and took up their lodgings without suspicion of treachery. But, early in the morning of the fair, the earl of March attacked the town with a strong armed force, and set fire to it. The English were dragged from their houses and booths and murdered without respect of age or sex, or burned in their dwellings, and, after collecting a rich booty, the earl marched off with his men as though he had performed a legitimate act of war.

The English borderers, provoked at the atrocity of this attack, flew to arms and ravaged the lands of Sir John Gordon, a baron of the earl of March's party, who had been very prominent in the massacre at Roxburgh. Gordon retaliated by collecting his vassals, and making a raid into England, from whence he returned with a large booty in cattle and prisoners. He was intercepted in his retreat by an English borderer, Sir John Lilburne, with a superior force, and an obstinate engagement took place in a mountain-pass, which ended in the defeat of the English. Sir John Gordon was himself seriously wounded, but he secured his booty, and carried off Sir John Lilburne as his prisoner. Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland, the warden of the English marches, incensed at this breach of the truce, raised an army of seven thousand men, and entered the possessions of the earl of March with the resolution of taking exemplary vengeance on the turbulent Scot.

But while he lay encamped near Duns, in Berwickshire, a trick was played upon his army which threw ridicule upon the expedition. In the dead of night the English camp was surrounded by a tumultuous rabble of Scots, armed with rattles used by the peasantry to drive wild beasts away from their flocks, and with these and a horrible mixture of discordant yells and

[1377-1383 A.D.] shouts, they threw the English into the utmost terror and confusion. The English force consisted chiefly of knights and men-at-arms, who had slept on their arms, leaving their horses picketed round the outside of the camp, in the care of their valets and camp-boys. The men stood to their arms and prepared to resist an attack, but the horses, terrified at the noise, broke loose and ran wild over the plain, whence most of them were carried off by the Scots. When daybreak at last appeared no enemy was visible, and the English soon discovered the stratagem by which they had been alarmed, and the loss of their horses. Angry and mortified, they were obliged to return into England on foot, though they first pillaged the lands of the earl of March, and carried away a considerable booty.

The same hostilities were carried on by the Scots on the western borders, and a piratical fleet of Scottish, French, and Spanish ships, under a Scottish adventurer named Mercer, infested the seas. The Scottish government was too feeble to restrain these outrages, and that of England was at this moment wanting in the energy to resist them. It was left to an English merchant named Philpot to fit out a fleet at his own expense, with which he encountered and destroyed or captured the whole of Mercer's armament. Among these were fifteen Spanish vessels and a considerable number of rich prizes.

The hostilities continued unchecked, and at length a party of adventurers, under Alexander Ramsay, surprised and captured the castle of Berwick. The earl of Northumberland, with a force of ten thousand men, laid siege to the castle, which was taken after an obstinate defence, in which Ramsay and his handful of borderers for some length of time held the whole English army at bay. This event occurred in the year 1378. When the castle of Berwick was reduced, the earl of Northumberland marched with his army into Scotland to ravage the southern districts, where the lands of the hostile borderers lay. As they advanced, Sir Archibald Douglas, lord of Galloway, with a considerable force, though quite unequal to that of the English earl, encountered Sir Thomas Musgrave with an advanced party of English at Melrose, and after a short but obstinate engagement defeated them, taking Musgrave and his son, with many knights and other prisoners. Douglas then fell back upon Edinburgh, and the Percy, when he had done all the mischief he could, returned to England.

The following year presented a repetition of the same scenes of slaughter and devastation, until at length, in 1380, John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, whose influence at this time ruled England, marched to Scotland at the head of a powerful army, with the declared object of establishing peace and good order between the two countries. A cessation of hostilities having been agreed to, the duke disbanded his army and soon afterwards a conference was held between him and the earl of Carrick, the next heir to the Scottish throne, which ended in the renewal of the truce for three years.

On the expiration of the truce in 1383, the Scots recommenced hostilities, and Sir Archibald Douglas captured the castle of Lochmaberry, which had remained in the hands of the English. On the other hand, the duke of Lancaster, with a numerous army, marched into Scotland, and a fleet of victualling ships attended on his progress. But they found that the Scots had completely cleared the country of everything movable, and the English soldiers in a wasted country, with an unusually severe season (it was the month of March), suffered greatly. The system of warfare so strongly recommended by Robert Bruce was thus successful under his son-in-law; the English army was obliged by its necessities to retreat. The borders, however, continued to be the scene of hostilities.

[1385 A.D.]

JOHN DE VIENNE AND THE FRENCH ALLIES IN SCOTLAND

While affairs were in this state in Scotland, a new element of hostility was in preparation abroad to plunge the Scots into a war with England. The government of France, after some reflection, determined to put in force the late treaty with the Scots, by sending an army into Scotland to invade England from the north. John de Vienne, admiral of France, and one of the most experienced captains of the age, was chosen to command this expedition, and he carried over into Scotland a thousand knights, esquires, and men-atarms, the flower of the French army, with about the same number of crossbow men and common soldiers. John de Vienne and his small but brilliant army came to anchor in the ports of Leith and Dunbar in the May of 1385. They were received with great joy by the Scottish nobles, who shared in a liberal distribution of French gold and of foreign armour, for the French commander had brought with him fourteen hundred suits of the latter and 50,000 francs of gold. On their arrival at Edinburgh the king was absent

in a distant part of the country, and they were received by the earls of Moray and Douglas. It was quite impossible to find room for them all in the capital, so that it was found necessary to seek lodgings in the villages around. Comforts were rare in Scotland at this time, and when the French knights, fresh from the luxurious hotels of Paris, found themselves billeted amid poverty and privations, it is not to be surprised if there was much murmuring and discontent. Nor were the complaints all on their side, for the people were prejudiced against the foreign language and the loose manners of their guests, who appropriated to themselves whatever they liked, and assumed an air of haughty superiority which was particularly disagreeable to the Scots. The lesser barons and the people soon quarrelled with these visitors, and did everything they could to give them annoyance.

The hostility increased to such a degree that their foraging parties were frequently cut off by the peasantry, so that more than a hundred men were slain in the space of a month. At length, after much reluctance on the part of the king, an army of thirty thousand horsemen was soon assembled in the neighbourhood of the capital.

It seems evident that King Robert was himself averse to the war, and his infirmities hindered him from being an eye-witness of its ravages. While he remained at Edinburgh, his sons, with the earls of Douglas, Moray, Mar,

[1385 A.D.] and Sutherland, marched at the head of the army. The country was everywhere ravaged with fire and sword, and an accumulating mass of plunder and prisoners accompanied the march of the army as it proceeded by Alnwick to the gates of Newcastle. Here intelligence reached the Scottish leaders that the barons of England had assembled their forces and were marching rapidly against them. It had always been the policy of the Scots to avoid great battles, and they now prepared to retreat with their booty. The proud admiral of France was shocked at the Scottish mode of making war, and he urged strongly and vainly the earls of Douglas and Moray to remain where they were, and give battle to their opponents.

The English army pursued its devastating course through a country in which the inhabitants had left nothing to destroy except bare walls and green crops, and the churches and monasteries. Melrose and Dryburgh were delivered to the flames. Edinburgh itself was plundered and burned. The monastery of Holyrood was spared at the intercession of the duke of Lancaster, who had been hospitably lodged in it. Many other towns and villages were burned by the English army, which now began to run short of provisions. The duke of Lancaster recommended the bold but somewhat perilous measure of passing the Forth and leading the army into the northern provinces which had not been stripped by the Scots, but the king was so much alarmed at this proposal that he accused his uncle of treasonable motives in suggesting it. It only now remained for the English army to retreat, and as usual they experienced the inevitable consequence of the destruction which had attended their progress. Multitudes of the soldiers died on their way home from the hardships and privations they endured in a country utterly stripped and wasted.

Meanwhile the army under Douglas and the admiral had not been idle. Instead of following the English army, they turned off into the western marches, and there, joined by the forces of Sir Archibald Douglas, they overran and ravaged Cumberland with dreadful ferocity. After having laid waste the lands of the principal border barons, they made an attack upon Carlisle, but were beaten off with loss. The jealousies between the Scots and their foreign allies now broke out anew, and with an increase of bitterness. Most of the French knights were anxious to depart, for they were by this time reduced to a wretched condition by sickness and privation, and they were nearly all without horses, so that it would have been dangerous to provoke their hosts too far. The admiral, accordingly, entered into an agreement, by which he bound himself to discharge all claims of damage and reparation which were made against his soldiers, and not to leave the country himself till they were fully satisfied. The French knights were thus allowed to depart, and Froissart quaintly informs us that "divers knights and squires had passage and returned into Flanders, as wind and weather drove them, with neither horse nor harness, right poor and feeble, cursing the day that ever they came upon such an adventure, and fervently desiring that the kings of France and England would conclude a peace for a year or two, were it only to have the satisfaction of uniting their armies and utterly destroying the realm of Scotland." John de Vienne himself discharged his responsibilities as quickly as possible, and returned to France. Thus ended an expedition on the great effects of which the French reckoned so much, and were grievously disappointed.

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Hostilities continued to be carried on with great animosity. The government of Richard II became weaker and weaker, and no combined measures were taken to suppress the inroads of the Scots, who began systematically

[1385-1388 A.D.]

to ravage the English counties on the border. The booty that was thus successively carried off from the English territory was immense.

In the resolution of the Scots to carry on the war, the wishes of King Robert had again been overruled by his nobles. It was decided at a council held in Edinburgh that the whole military force of the kingdom should be mustered at Jedburgh, in order to invade England on an extensive scale. The king's eldest son, the earl of Carrick, was feeble of body, and apparently not very strong of mind, and his next brother, the earl of Fife, was appointed to command in this important expedition. On the day appointed for the muster, the Scottish army assembled at Yetholm, a small town at the foot of the Cheviot hills, about twelve miles from Jedburgh. It consisted of twelve hundred men-at-arms and forty thousand infantry, including a small body of archers, forming together such a force as had not been gathered together in Scotland for a long time. The earl of Fife determined to separate his force, and while one division, commanded by himself, marched through Liddesdale, the smaller division, commanded by the earl of Douglas, was directed to invade the eastern marches.

Another expedition at this moment occupied another of the Douglases, Sir Archibald, popularly known as the Black Douglas, the natural son of Sir Archibald of Galloway, a man of great celebrity among the Scots for his strength and valour in war, as well as for his gentleness and courtesy in time of peace. He had married one of the king's daughters, Egidia, who was as much celebrated for her beauty, as her husband was renowned for his warlike qualities. The Black Douglas had been provoked by the piracies of the Irish shipping on the coast of Galloway, and with five hundred lances he made a retaliatory descent on the Irish coast, at Carlingford. On their return from this successful expedition, Douglas took horse and rode in all haste to join the army which had crossed the English border.

Meanwhile the earl of Douglas, passing the Tyne, had thrown himself into the heart of the bishopric of Durham before any one was aware of his approach. There the Scots began immediately their usual course of devastation, and burned and slew without opposition over the whole country between Durham and Newcastle, and then led their army before the latter town. The English barons on the border had been completely surprised by this sudden invasion, and in the uncertainty in which the capture of one of their spies had left them they imagined that the small army under Douglas was only the van of the Scottish forces, which they supposed were following after, and they were therefore more cautious in their movements. On the first intimation of danger the earl of Northumberland began to collect a force at Alnwick, and sent his two sons, Henry [called Hotspur] and Ralph Percy, to Newcastle, where they had assembled the principal gentry of Yorkshire. Froissart, who had received his information from men of both sides who were present, gives a detailed and interesting account of the events which followed, and which forms one of the most chivalrous episodes of the wars of this turbulent age.

FROISSART'S ACCOUNT OF OTTERBURN OR CHEVY CHACE (1388 A.D.)

The Scots lords, having completed the object of their expedition into Durham, lay before Newcastle three days, where there was an almost continual skirmish. The sons of the earl of Northumberland, from their great courage, were always the first at the barriers, when many valiant deeds were done with lances hand to hand. The earl of Douglas had a long conflict with