rallied and saved the king; however, Douglas got back unharmed to his own folk. At last the Scots army stole away during the night, and the next day the English found their camp empty, save that there were "more than 500 slaughtered oxen lying there which they had killed, as they could not have driven them fast enough to take them with them, and more than 300 kettles made of hide with the hair outside, full of meat and water, hung on the fires ready for boiling, and more than 1000 spits of wood with meat on them for roasting, and over 10,000 pair of worn-out brogues of undressed hide which the Scots had left." The English, who had been half starved as the country was stripped so bare, got a good meal that day, but they could not push on further. So the young king came back with sorrow and without honour, but men said "that the Scots could have been brought to battle if Mortimer had not betrayed his lord, taking meed and money from the Scots to the intent that they might get away privily by night without fighting." Soon after [March 17, 1328] was made the Shameful Peace at Northampton, by which Edward gave up all claims over Scotland, promised to marry his sister Joan of the Tower to David, King Robert's son, and agreed to give back the Scottish crown jewels, while the Scots were to pay £20,000 for the hurt they had done the English by their raids. 2. This peace was made by the queen-mother and the Earl of March, and it displeased the English barons, who were already disgusted at the evil life these two led and at their greed, for they held all the estates of the Despensers and the most part of the Crown lands. It was not worth while to have overthrown former favourites to be ruled by a fresh one. Lancaster tried to get the king's uncles to rise against Mortimer. And they promised him help, but left him in the lurch at the last, and he was obliged to make his peace with March. However, the Earl of Kent did not escape, for he was tried, condemned, and beheaded, March 19, 1330, by reason of certain letters which he had written to his brother, whom he believed to be still alive in Corfe Castle. But Edward was now married to Philippa of Hainault, Mortimer is overthrown, October 20, 1330. and felt himself old enough to rule alone; he therefore readily listened to Lancaster and his friends, who showed him the misdeeds of his mother and Mortimer, and begged him to end their ill rule. Accordingly on 19th October 1330 the young king suddenly broke into the queen-mother's room at Nottingham, by a secret passage which had been left un guarded, and arrested the Earl of March as a traitor, though Isabel prayed him to "have mercy upon her gentle Mortimer." The captive earl was soon tried and found guilty of the murder of Edward II., of taking upon himself the rule of the realm against law and right, of robbing the king of the money paid by the Scots, and of other crimes, and was put to death as a traitor. The queen-mother was sent to Castle Rising, where she spent many years quietly in safe keeping. The young king now for a while gave himself up to pleasure. There were splendid tournaments held at Dartmouth, Stepney, and Cheapside. At the second the king and fifteen knights challenged all comers for three days, riding through the city to the lists in kirtles and cloaks of green cloth lined with red silk, embroidered all over with arrows in gold, their squires following in white kirtles with the right sleeves green and gold-embroidered like their masters. In the third, in Cheapside, the king and fifteen knights appeared masked in Tartar dresses, with long furred gowns and tall caps, every knight having on his right hand a masked lady dressed in a gown of red velvet with a white camlet cape, who led him by a silver chain fastened to his wrist, while sixty squires in one livery went before, with a band of musicians playing trumpets and other instruments, as the company rode two and two through the city. 3. In 1328 Robert the Brus had died, and his son's Council would not fulfil the promises he had made to give back to the English nobles who had lands in Scotland the estates they had lost. The disinherited lords, the Earl of Athole, the Earl of Buchan, Lord Liddesdale, Lord Percy, Talbot, and others, at last chose as their leader Edward Balliol, son of King John, and landed at Kinghorn, in Fife, August 7, 1332, being in all 500 mounted men and 3000 on foot. Yet Balliol totally overthrew the Scottish Regent, Donald, Earl of Mar, at Dupplin Moor, August 12, and taking Perth, was crowned at Scone, 24th September. To win Edward's favour he agreed to hold Scotland of him and to give him Berwick. The party of King David, however, were not crushed; they sent the little king out of the way of danger to be brought up in France, and by a surprise at Annan, 25th December, drove Balliol into England. Here, however, he got help from King Edward, who now openly joined in the war. Archibald Douglas, the new Warden for David, was beaten and slain at Halidon Hill by Tweed, July 19, with a dreadful Edward Balliol wins and loses Scotland, 1332-1339. slaughter of Scottish knights and yeomen. song-maker Minot triumphs in this victory: "Scots out of Berwick and out of Aberdeen, The English At the Burn of Bannock ye were far too keen. There, wretch, shalt thou stay and wait a weary while; Balliol was once more received as king in Scotland, but when he gave up the Lothians to England in 1334 he was again driven out. And though the two kings marched in full force through the country as far as Inverness in 1335, they could not hold it, and the Warden, Andrew Moray of Bothwell, son of Wallace's friend, overcame and killed Athole, Balliol's bravest leader, at Culbleen. Under the next Warden, Walter the Steward, castle after castle was taken by the Scots; while "Black Agnes of Dunbar," Randolf's daughter, kept her stronghold manfully against the English. So in 1339 Edward Balliol left the country in despair, and two years afterward, when King David came back from France, he took over his kingdom almost as free from foes as his father had left it. 4. Edward of England was however growing less and less inclined to busy himself at present with the reconquest of Scotland; he had wider plans. In 1328 his uncle Charles the Fair had died childless, and he had claimed the French crown in right of his mother; for though the French would not allow a woman to rule their kingdom, he held that descent through a woman was no bar to his right, and that he was nearer of blood to the late king than his cousin Charles of Navarre. However, the French peers judged the crown to another cousin, Philip of Valois, and Edward, reserving his rights, had twice done homage for Aquitaine to him. But now Philip lent ships to the Scots, which they used to plunder The beginning of the Hundred Years' War, 1337. English merchantmen; he was keeping David at his court, and in other ways openly taking the part of the Scots against the English. Edward tried again and again to get Philip to cease to uphold the Scots. He offered to join him in a crusade, to unite their houses by intermarriages; but all of no avail, and at last, weary of the French king's covert enmity, he resolved upon open war. To this course many things combined to draw him. There was the old grudge between the English and French kings for several generations owing to their respective claims upon Normandy and Gascony. There were the persuasions of the French exiles at the English Court, especially Robert, Earl of Artois, Philip's brother-in-law, who had done his best to get Philip chosen King of France, but had afterward been deprived of his inheritance and driven abroad by his kinsman. There was the danger of letting the French get hold of the great cities of the Low Countries, which were the chief markets for English wool and goods, and our traders were eager to help the men of Ghent, against their lord the Earl of Flanders, whose cause was upheld by Philip. Accordingly in 1337 Edward gave out that he was about to go to war with Philip to recover his lawful heritage the crown of France, in spite of the warning letters of Pope Benedict XII. (who was afraid of his joining the Emperor Lewis of Bavaria against himself), and he soon afterwards took the title and arms of King of France. The English nobles were not at all displeased to follow a brave young knight to a war in which they ran no danger of hardship or famine, but had good hope of rich plunder and heavy ransom from wealthy prisoners, even if they did not win broad lands and high titles. The English merchants who had suffered by the French and Scottish sea-rovers were glad to think that piracy would be stopped in the Channel, and that they would be able to pay back the Norman privateers for the damage they had done to the coast towns. The English churchmen did not care for the popes, now that they were living at Avignon, away from Rome their own city, and in the power of the French king, and they were glad that they would not be obliged to pay these "French popes" so much money or to see the |