Nigel Tranter - The Price of the King's Peace

“Shame, yes, Sir Ingram. Shame that the Flower of Chivalry is cankered in the bud! Shame to spare him because he is my own kin.”

“I esteemed you greater than this. Robert Bruce! I have fought against you, yes. But I ever esteemed you noble. This young man is my friend…”

“As all know but too well, man!” That was Fraser, the Chamberlain, with a coarse laugh.

Umfraville, spare, grey, but flushed, ignored him, and the murmurs of others.

“If you do this wicked thing, Sire-I shall leave your kingdom. Leave this Scotland. I have chosen to dwell in for thirty years. Wipe the dust of it from my feet. For ever!”

Curiously, compassionately, Bruce eyed the strange man.

“That I shall regret, Sir Ingram. You must do what you will. But you have great estates in Northumberland. Go to them. Like your nephew, Angus. None will hinder you. But this alters nothing. Sit, sir-or leave my Council table. My decision stands. The matter is closed.

Now, to this of the proposed truce PART THREE

Chapter Twenty

On a slow rise of ground above the wide, sluggish River Ribble, to the northeast of the town, and so clear of the billowing smoke clouds, Robert Bruce, in mud-spattered, travel-stained armour, sat his horse and watched Preston-in-Amoundemess burn. The sight gave him not even a grim satisfaction; Wallace’s burning of the Barns of Ayr, and the times without number when he himself had been forced to set afire his own Scots towns, villages and countryside, to deny their food, shelter and comfort to the invading English, had left him with a revulsion against the sight of blazing towns and fleeing, unhappy citizenry.

Nevertheless, this deed was necessary -or so he assured himself—if Edward of Carnarvon was to be dissuaded from his new invasion of Scotland; just as burned Lancaster behind them had been necessary.

If the King of Scots did not display any satisfaction, most of those around him certainly did. And with some reason. For the burning of Preston and Lancaster was only the culmination of the most brilliant piece of raid-warfare yet to be demonstrated against the stubborn English who would not come to the peace-table.

Never had there been anything like this, even under Douglas at his most inspired, the hardened veterans averred-and led by the King himself, indeed entirely planned by him. This should prove, if anything could, that there was no truth in the rumours of a sore sickness that was said to be eating into the Bruce and debilitating him. If this campaign was the work of a sick and failing man, then pray the gods of war for more of the sort, they said!

The plunder had been phenomenal-this area was rich, and had never before been ravaged, the County Palatine, Fumess, Amoundemess, almost down to the Welsh marches. For all that, they were not weighed down, as so often, and dangerously, with booty; for Angus Og’s galley-fleet had kept them company, offshore, and now lay in the Ribble estuary nearby, laden with treasure, hostages and prisoners for ransom. They had had to fight nothing like a pitched battle throughout-Bruce had seen to that; but such skirmishes as had developed, they had won with ease. This was coolly planned, strategic warfare, with a vengeance, and no mere rough raiding.

Preston’s smoke was intended to blow eastwards indeed, right across the Pennines, to York itself, where King Edward was mustering hugely; and to Teesdale, where Douglas and Moray waited, left in dangerous isolation when Thomas, Earl of Lancaster’s revolt collapsed at Boroughbridge, yet reluctant to retire on Scotland while they might yet menace Edward’s flank and hinder his advance.

For the entire strategic and military situation had changed, these past three months of 1322. It had all come about by what might seem utterly irrelevant happenings. King Edward’s new favourite, Sir Hugh le Despenser, had finally become so obnoxiously arrogant and greedy that many of the old aristocracy had been driven to take arms against him and his father, led by Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, and the same Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Pembroke, who had played a less than glorious part at Bannockburn. In this civil warfare, Lancaster, who was of English royal blood and had an eye on his unpopular cousin’s throne, got in touch with the King of Scots, seeking his support, with promises of peace and friendship when he won the crown. Bruce, who neither admired nor trusted traitors, however much he had been forced to work with them, did not rate Lancaster’s chances highly; but it suited his tactics meantime to fish in troubled waters, and the moment the Pope’s two year truce expired, he sent Douglas, Moray and the Steward south, not so much to aid the revolt as to take advantage of King Edward’s preoccupation- always with the objective of bringing that obstinate weakling to a peace-treaty at last.

After Hereford had won a victory over the Despensers on the Welsh marches, he marched north to effect a junction with Lancaster, in Yorkshire. Now it was outright rebellion against their King. Edward mustered a loyalist army at York, and was fortunate indeed in that Sir Andrew Harcla, recently made Earl of Carlisle, decided to switch his allegiance. Harcla was a fine soldier if an unreliable man, and had hitherto worked in cooperation with Lancaster, his patron. In March, he moved south with the levies of Cumberland and Westmorland, caught the rebel army by surprise and in the rear, at Boroughbridge, where they were penned against the River Ure with the King’s forces in front, and defeated them entirely, with great slaughter. Hereford was slain in the battle, and Lancaster captured, with many other lords. For once, thereafter, Edward acted decisively. Lancaster and the others were summarily beheaded—Lancaster, who had slain Piers Gaveston.

Douglas, Moray and the Steward, operating independently in Cleveland

to the north, with a force of about 4,000 only, found themselves in a potentially dangerous position.

The King of England, for his part, suddenly was in a stronger position than any he had known since Bannockburn, at the head of an enormous and victorious army, with the defeated rebels anxious to flock to his banner and prove their new loyalty, and his main internal opposition discomfited, the Despensers carrying all before them. Out of the blue Edward announced that he would proceed north, to punish the rebellious Scots at last and wipe out the stain of Bannockburn.

In this abruptly transformed and unexpected situation, Bruce flung aside all his preoccupations, and acted with his old dash and verve. He sent couriers to order Douglas and the others to remain as a threat to the English host on the northeast, but to retire discreetly before it; he himself would make shift to pose another threat on the west.

Fortunately Angus Og’s fleet was mobilised, indeed at its old game of

raiding the Antrim coast. Bruce sent urgent pleas to his friend for

help, and offered vastly richer pickings on the North-West coast of

England than anything he could gain in Ireland. Himself, with a

hastily-raised light cavalry force of about 8,000, raced south by

west.

West indeed they had raced, in a fashion never before attempted, Bruce using knowledge gained as a youth in wild fowling expeditions on the Solway marshes and coasts. At low tide, the great shallow West Coast estuaries, in North England as well as South Scotland, all but dried out; and the King now risked a great series of gamble with sea and tides. Avoiding all the normal and necessarily slow routes by the Border passes and the Cumberland mountains, he had led his galloping horsemen splashing across the successive daunting shallows of the Solway estuary, then south round the West Cumberland coastline by Silloth, Workington and Whitehaven, across the estuarine sands of the Esk, at Ravenglass, and the Duddon at Millom, into Fumess. Then on over the levels of Leven-mouth near Ulverston and so into Cartmel, finally thundering over the Kent-bank sands of wide Morecambe Bay and down upon Lancaster itself. By taking enormous risks with racing tides, quicksands and mud-banks, and the fording of innumerable channels, by the most skilful calculations of tidal-timing, the Scots force had descended, totally without warning and at an almost unbelievable speed, upon an area in the heart of England thought to be entirely immune, more than one hundred miles south of Car’ lisle-and, at Preston, slightly south even of York. All this in the course of a few hectic days.