The injured nobles, possessed of such a head, began to think of vindicating their rights by force of arms; and they applied to Edward for his concurrence and assistance. But there were several reasons which deterred the king from openly avowing their enterprise. In his treaty with Scotland he had entered into a bond of twenty thousand pounds, payable to the pope, if within four years he violated the peace; and as the term was not yet elapsed, he dreaded the exacting of that penalty by the sovereign pontiff, who possessed so many means of forcing princes to make payment. He was also afraid that violence and injustice would every where be imputed to him, if he attacked with superior force a minor king, and a brother-in-law, whose independent title had so lately been acknowledged by a solemn treaty. And as the regent of Scotland, on every demand which had been made of restitution to the English barons, had always confessed the justice of their claim, and had only given an evasive answer, grounded on plausible pretences, Edward resolved not to proceed by open violence, but to employ like artifices against him. He secretly encouraged Baliol in his enterprise; connived at his assembling forces in the north; and gave countenance to the nobles who were disposed to join in the attempt. A force of near two thousand five hundred men was enlisted under Baliol, by Umfreville, earl of Angus, the lords Beaumont, Ferrars, Fitz-warin, Wake, Stafford, Talbot, and Moubray. As these adventurers apprehended that the frontiers would be strongly armed and guarded, they resolved to make their attack by sea; and having embarked at Ravenspur, they reached in a few days the coast of Fife.
Scotland was at that time in a very different situation from that in which it had appeared under the victorious Robert. Besides the loss of that great monarch, whose genius and authority preserved entire the whole political fabric, and maintained a union among the unruly barons, Lord Douglas, impatient of rest, had gone over to Spain in a crusade against the Moors, and had there perished in battle:[*] the earl of Murray, who had long been declining through age and infirmities, had lately died, and had been succeeded in the regency by Donald, earl of Marre, a man of much inferior talents: the military spirit of the Scots, though still unbroken, was left without a proper guidance and direction: and a minor king seemed ill qualified to defend an inheritance, which it had required all the consummate valor and abilities of his father to acquire and maintain.
* Froissard, liv. i. chap. 21.
But as the Scots were apprised of the intended invasion, great numbers, on the appearance of the English fleet, immediately ran to the shore, in order to prevent the landing of the enemy. Baliol had valor and activity, and he drove back the Scots with considerable loss.[*] He marched westward into the heart of the country; flattering himself that the ancient partisans of his family would declare for him. But the fierce animosities which had been kindled between the two nations, inspiring the Scots with a strong prejudice against a prince supported by the English, he was regarded as a common enemy; and the regent found no difficulty in assembling a great army to oppose him. It is pretended that Marre had no less than forty thousand men under his banners; but the same hurry and impatience that made him collect a force, which, from its greatness, was so disproportioned to the occasion, rendered all his motions unskilful and imprudent. The River Erne ran between the two armies; and the Scots, confiding in that security, as well as in their great superiority of numbers, kept no order in their encampment. Baliol passed the river in the night-time; attacked the unguarded and undisciplined Scots; threw them into confusion, which was increased by the darkness, and by their very numbers, to which they trusted; and he beat them off the field with great slaughter.[**] But in the morning, when the Scots were at some distance, they were ashamed of having yielded the victory to so weak a foe, and they hurried back to recover the honor of the day. Their eager passions urged them precipitately to battle, without regard to some broken ground which lay between them and the enemy, and which disordered and confounded their ranks. Baliol seized the favorable opportunity, advanced his troops upon them, prevented them from rallying, and anew chased them off the field with redoubled slaughter. There fell above twelve thousand Scots in this action; and among these the flower of their nobility; the regent himself, the earl of Carrick, a natural son of their late king, the earls of Athole and Monteith, lord Hay of Errol, constable, and the lords Keith and Lindsey. The loss of the English scarcely exceeded thirty men; a strong proof, among many others, of the miserable state of military discipline in those ages.[***]
* Heming. p. 272. Walsing. p. 131. Knyghton, p. 2560. ** Knyghton, p. 2561. *** Heming. p. 273. Walsing. p. 131. Knyghton, p. 2561.
Baliol soon after made himself master of Perth; but still was not able to bring over any of the Scots to his party. Patric Dunbar, earl of Marche, and Sir Archibald Douglas, brother to the lord of that name, appeared at the head of the Scottish armies, which amounted still to near forty thousand men; and they purposed to reduce Baliol and the English by famine. They blockaded Perth by land; they collected some vessels with which they invested it by water; but Baliol’s ships, attacking the Scottish fleet, gained a complete victory, and opened the communication between Perth and the sea.[*] The Scotch armies were then obliged to disband for want of pay and subsistence: the nation was in effect subdued by a handful of men: each nobleman who found himself most exposed to danger, successively submitted to Baliol: that prince was crowned at Scone: David, his competitor, was sent over to France with his betrothed wife Jane, sister to Edward: and the heads of his party sued to Baliol for a truce, which he granted them, in order to assemble a parliament in tranquillity, and have his title recognized by the whole Scottish nation.
* Heming p. 273. Knyghton, p. 2561.
1333.
But Baliol’s imprudence, or his necessities, making him dismiss the greater part of his English followers, he was, notwithstanding the truce, attacked of a sudden near Annan, by Sir Archibald Douglas and other chieftains of that party; he was routed; his brother, John Baliol, was slain; he himself was chased into England in a miserable condition; and thus lost his kingdom by a revolution as sudden as that by which he had acquired it.
While Baliol enjoyed his short-lived and precarious royalty, he had been sensible that, without the protection of England, it would be impossible for him to maintain possession of the throne; and he had secretly sent a message to Edward, offering to acknowledge his superiority, to renew the homage for his crown, and to espouse the princess Jane, if the pope’s consent could be obtained for dissolving her former marriage, which was not yet consummated. Edward, ambitious of recovering that important concession, made by Mortimer during his minority, threw off all scruples, and willingly accepted the offer; but as the dethroning of Baliol had rendered this stipulation of no effect, the king prepared to reinstate him in possession of the crown; an enterprise which appeared from late experience so easy and so little hazardous. As he possessed many popular arts, he consulted his parliament on the occasion; but that assembly, finding the resolution already taken, declined giving any opinion, and only granted him, in order to support the enterprise, an aid of a fifteenth from the personal estates of the nobility and gentry, and a tenth of the movables of boroughs. And they added a petition, that the king would thenceforth live on his own revenue, without grieving his subjects by illegal taxes, or by the outrageous seizure of their goods in the shape of purveyance.[*]
As the Scots expected that the chief brunt of the war would fall upon Berwick, Douglas, the regent, threw a strong garrison into that place, under the command of Sir William Keith, and he himself assembled a great army on the frontiers, ready to penetrate into England as soon as Edward should have invested that place. The English army was less numerous, but better supplied with arms and provisions, and retained in stricter discipline; and the king, notwithstanding the valiant defence made by Keith, had in two months reduced the garrison to extremities, and had obliged them to capitulate: they engaged to surrender, if they were not relieved within a few days by their countrymen.[**] This intelligence being conveyed to the Scottish army, which was preparing to invade Northumberland, changed their plan of operations, and engaged them to advance towards Berwick, and attempt the relief of that important fortress. Douglas, who had ever purposed to decline a pitched battle, in which he was sensible of the enemy’s superiority, and who intended to have drawn out the war by small skirmishes, and by mutually ravaging each other’s country, was forced, by the impatience of his troops, to put the fate of the kingdom upon the event of one day. He attacked the English at Halidown Hill, a little north of Berwick; and though his heavy-armed cavalry dismounted, in order to render the action more steady and desperate, they were received with such valor by Edward, and were so galled by the English archers, that they were soon thrown into disorder and on the fall of Douglas, their general, were totally routed. The whole army fled in confusion, and the English, but much more the Irish, gave little quarter in the pursuit: all the nobles of chief distinction were either slain or taken prisoners: near thirty thousand of the Scots fell in the action; while the loss of the English amounted only to one knight, one esquire, and thirteen private soldiers; an inequality almost incredible.[***]
* Cotton’s Abridg. ** Rymer, vol. iv. p. 564, 565, 566 *** Heming. p. 275, 276, 277. Knyghton, p. 2559. Otterborne, p 115.
After this fatal blow, the Scottish nobles had no other resource than instant submission; and Edward, leaving a considerable body with Baliol to complete the conquest of the kingdom, returned with the remainder of his army to England. Baliol was acknowledged king by a parliament assembled at Edinburgh;[*] the superiority of England was again recognized; many of the Scottish nobility swore fealty to Edward; and to complete the misfortunes of that nation, Baliol ceded Berwick, Dunbar, Roxburgh, Edinburgh, and all the south-east counties of Scotland, which were declared to be forever annexed to the English monarchy.[**]
* Rymer vol. v. p. 590. ** Rymer, vol. iv. p. 614.
1334.
If Baliol on his first appearance was dreaded by the Scots, as an instrument employed by England for the subjection of the kingdom, this deed confirmed all their suspicions, and rendered him the object of universal hatred. Whatever submissions they might be obliged to make, they considered him not as their prince, but as the delegate and confederate of their determined enemy: and neither the manners of the age, nor the state of Edward’s revenue, permitting him to maintain a standing army in Scotland, the English forces were no sooner withdrawn, than the Scots revolted from Baliol, and returned to their former allegiance under Bruce. Sir Andrew Murray, appointed regent by the party of this latter prince, employed with success his valor and activity in many small but decisive actions against Baliol; and in a short time had almost wholly expelled him the kingdom.
1335.
Edward was obliged again to assemble an army, and to march into Scotland: the Scots, taught by experience, withdrew into their hills and fastnesses: he destroyed the houses and ravaged the estates of those whom he called rebels: but this confirmed them still further in their obstinate antipathy to England and to Baliol; and being now rendered desperate, they were ready to take advantage, on the first opportunity, of the retreat of their enemy, and they soon reconquered their country from the English.
1336.
Edward made anew his appearance in Scotland with like success: he found every thing hostile in the kingdom, except the spot on which he was encamped: and though he marched uncontrolled over the low countries, the nation itself was farther than ever from being broken and subdued. Besides being supported by their pride and anger, passions difficult to tame, they were encouraged, amidst all their calamities, by daily promises of relief from France; and as war was now likely to break out between that kingdom and England, they had reason to expect, from this incident, a great diversion of that force which had so long oppressed and overwhelmed them.
1337.
We now come to a transaction on which depended the most memorable events, not only of this long and active reign, but of the whole English and French history during more than a century; and it will therefore be necessary to give a particular account of the springs and causes of it.
It had long been a prevailing opinion, that the crown of France could never descend to a female; and in order to give more authority to this maxim, and assign it a determinate origin, it had been usual to derive it from a clause in the Salian code, the law of an ancient tribe among the Franks; though that clause, when strictly examined, carries only the appearance of favoring this principle, and does not really, by the confession of the best antiquaries, bear the sense commonly imposed upon it. But though positive law seems wanting among the French for the exclusion of females, the practice had taken place; and the rule was established beyond controversy on some ancient as well as some modern precedents. During the first race of the monarchy, the Franks were so rude and barbarous a people, that they were incapable of submitting to a female reign; and in that period of their history there were frequent instances of kings advanced to royalty, in prejudice of females who were related to the crown by nearer degrees of consanguinity. These precedents, joined to like causes, had also established the male succession in the second race; and though the instances were neither so frequent nor so certain during that period, the principle of excluding the female line seems still to have prevailed, and to have directed the conduct of the nation. During the third race, the crown had descended from father to son for eleven generations, from Hugh Capet to Lewis Hutin; and thus, in fact, during the course of nine hundred years, the French monarchy had always been governed by males, and no female, and none who founded his title on a female, had ever mounted the throne. Philip the Fair, father of Lewis Hutin, left three sons, this Lewis, Philip the Long, and Charles the Fair, and one daughter, Isabella, queen of England. Lewis Hutin, the eldest, left at his death one daughter, by Margaret, sister to Eudes, duke of Burgundy; and as his queen was then pregnant, Philip, his younger brother, was appointed regent, till it should appear whether the child proved a son or a daughter. The queen bore a male, who lived only a few days: Philip was proclaimed king: and as the duke of Burgundy made some opposition, and asserted the rights of his niece, the states of the kingdom, by a solemn and deliberate decree, gave her an exclusion, and declared all females forever incapable of succeeding to the crown of France. Philip died after a short reign, leaving three daughters; and his brother Charles, without dispute or controversy, then succeeded to the crown. The reign of Charles was also short; he left one daughter; but as his queen was pregnant, the next male heir was appointed regent, with a declared right of succession if the issue should prove female. This prince was Philip de Valois, cousin-german to the deceased king; being the son of Charles de Valois, brother of Philip the Fair. The queen of France was delivered of a daughter: the regency ended; and Philip de Valois was unanimously placed on the throne of France.
The king of England, who was at that time a youth of fifteen years of age, embraced a notion that he was entitled, in right of his mother, to the succession of the kingdom, and that the claim of the nephew was preferable to that of the cousin-german. There could not well be imagined a notion weaker or worse grounded. The principle of excluding females was of old an established opinion in France, and had acquired equal authority with the most express and positive law: it was supported by ancient precedents: it was confirmed by recent instances, solemnly and deliberately decided: and what placed it still farther beyond controversy, if Edward was disposed to question its validity, he thereby cut off his own pretensions; since the three last kings had all left daughters, who were still alive, and who stood before him in the order of succession. He was therefore reduced to assert that, though his mother Isabella was, on account of her sex, incapable of succeeding, he himself, who inherited through her, was liable to no such objection, and might claim by the right of propinquity. But, besides that this pretension was more favorable to Charles, king of Navarre, descended from the daughter of Lewis Hutin, it was so contrary to the established principles of succession in every country of Europe,[*] was so repugnant to the practice both in private and public inheritances, that nobody in France thought of Edward’s claim.
* Froissard, liv. i. chap. 4.
Philip’s title was universally recognized;[*] and he never imagined that he had a competitor, much less so formidable a one as the king of England.
But though the youthful and ambitious mind of Edward had rashly entertained this notion, he did not think proper to insist on his pretensions, which must have immediately involved him, on very unequal terms, in a dangerous and implacable war with so powerful a monarch. Philip was a prince of mature years, of great experience, and at that time of an established character both for prudence and valor; and by these circumstances, as well as by the internal union of his people, and their acquiescence in his undoubted right, he possessed every advantage above a raw youth, newly raised, by injustice and violence, to the government of the most intractable and most turbulent subjects in Europe. But there immediately occurred an incident which required that Edward should either openly declare his pretensions, or forever renounce and abjure them. He was summoned to do homage for Guienne: Philip was preparing to compel him by force of arms: that country was in a very bad state of defence: and the forfeiture of so rich an inheritance was, by the feudal law, the immediate consequence of his refusing or declining to perform the duty of a vassal. Edward therefore thought it prudent to submit to present necessity: he went over to Amiens, did homage to Philip, and as there had arisen some controversy concerning the terms of this submission, he afterwards sent over a formal deed, in which he acknowledged that he owed liege homage to France;[**] which was in effect ratifying, and that in the strongest terms, Philip’s title to the crown of that kingdom. His own claim indeed was so unreasonable, and so thoroughly disavowed by the whole French nation, that to insist on it was no better than pretending to the violent conquest of the kingdom; and it is probable that he would never have further thought of it, had it not been for some incidents which excited an animosity between the monarchs.
* Froissard, liv. i. chap. 22. ** Rymer, vol. iv. p. 477, 481. Froissard, liv. i. chap. 25. Anon, Hist. p. 394. Walsing. p. 130. Murimuth, p. 73. 195
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