History Of Scotland Vol. 1 - Part 14

( Originally Published 1909 )

King David's Character—Invasion of England—Battle of Durham —The Border Counties are conquered—The Steward defends the Country beyond the Forth; and Douglas recovers Ettricke Forest and Teviotdale—A Truce with England—David II. recognizes the Supremacy of Edward; but his Subjects refuse to do so—The Knight of Liddisdale seduced from his Allegiance: slain by his Godson, Lord Douglas—Treaty for the King's Ransom is broken off by the Interference of France—Battle of Nesbit Moor—Attempt on Berwick, which is relieved by Ed-ward III.—He invades Scotland—The Burnt Candlemas—The English are compelled to Retreat—King David is released from Captivity—His petulant Temper—His repeated Visits to Eng-land, and the Influence acquired over him by Edward—He proposes that the Succession of Scotland should go to Edward's Son Lionel—The Scottish Parliament reject the Proposal—Insurrection of the Steward and other Nobles: it is subdued, and Tranquillity , restored—New Scheme of Edward and David, which is laid aside as impracticable—David II. marries Catherine Logie, a beautiful Plebeian—Treaty of Peace interrupted by Difficulties about the King's Ransom, which are finally removed—Divorce between David and his Queen—Death of David II.—His Character—State of Scotland during his Reign

DAVID II was, as might be expected from the son of Robert Bruce, dauntlessly intrepid. He possessed a goodly person (a strong recommendation to the common people), and skill in martial exercises. But his education at the court of France had given him an uncontrollable love of pleasure; and such a propensity, while it resolves itself into the principle of intense selfishness, forms the very reverse of the public-spirited and disinterested character of a patriot king. He was young also, being only about eighteen when he landed at Inverbervie, and totally inexperienced. Such was the situation and disposition of the juvenile king of a country at once assailed by foreign war with an enemy of superior force, by civil faction and discord in its most frightful shape, by raging pestilence and wasting famine. It was only the additional curse of a weak and imprudent prince that could have added fresh gall to so much bitterness.

The ablest and most trustworthy counsellor whom David could have consulted was unquestionably the steward, who had held the regency till he resigned it on the king's arrival. But, failing heirs of David's body, of which none as yet existed, the steward was heir of the throne, and princes seldom love or greatly trust their successors when not of their own immediate family.

As Edward was absent in France, the time had seemed favorable for an attack upon the frontiers. Several attempts were made without decisive success on either side, which led to a truce of two years, ending on Martinmas, 1346. This cessation of arms was made between England and- France, and Scotland was included. David and his subjects, how-ever, became weary of the truce, which was broken off by a fierce incursion of the Knight of Liddisdale into England. In 1344, David prepared for an invasion upon a much larger scale, and summoned the whole array of Scotland, whether Highland or Lowland, to assemble at Perth. They came in great numbers, and Reginald or Ranald of the Isles, in particular, appeared with a strong body of his followers. Unhappily there was a deadly feud between this island lord and the powerful Earl of Ross. By the machinations of the latter chief, Reginald was murdered by a faithless harper, while in the monastery of Elcho, near Perth. The assassin, with his numerous followers, retired from the king's host for fear of punishment. The men of the isles, disgusted with the loss of their lord, and apprehensive of evil consequences,. broke up, and, deserting the royal standard, retired home in disorder, leaving the king's army much diminished in numbers. David, however, determined to proceed on his expedition.

He entered England from the western frontier. A fortress called the Moat of Liddell was held out stoutly by Walter Selby, the accomplice of the famous Middleton in the spoliation of the two cardinals and bishop-elect of Durham, and various other acts of robbery. At present he seems to have been engaged in the lawful defence of England, his native country; and we are, therefore, startled when we learn that the fortress being stormed, the governor was by King David ordered to be beheaded; for what crime against that prince is not apparent.

Moving eastward to Hexham, David's army marked its progress by the usual course of ferocious devastation, the more censured in that age, because the patrimony of St. Cuthbert experienced no favor or protection. The great northern barons of England, Percy and Neville, Musgrave, Scrope, and Hastings, assembled their forces in numbers sufficient to show that, though the conqueror of Crecy with his victorious army was absent in France, there were Englishmen enough left at home to protect the frontiers of his kingdom from violation. The archbishops of Canterbury and York, the prelates of Durham, Carlisle, and Lincoln, sent their retainers, and attended the rendezvous in person to add religious enthusiasm to the patriotic zeal of the barons. Ten thousand soldiers, who were to have been sent over to Calais to reinforce Edward III.'s army, were countermanded in this exigency, and added to the northern army.

Upon hearing of this formidable assembly of forces, the Knight of Liddisdale advised the Scottish king to retreat, and avoid a pitched battle. But the other barons, conceiving they saw a rich scene of plunder before them, would not listen to this counsel, which they imputed to the selfishness of Douglas, who, having enriched himself by English spoils, was now desirous, they thought, to abridge the opportunity of others to obtain their share. King David advanced to the park called Beaurepaire, near Durham (by corruption Bear Park), and took up his quarters there, although the ground was so intersected by enclosures as to render it difficult to draw up the troops in order, and impossible for the divisions duly to support each other.

The Knight of Liddisdale had advanced, on the morning of the 17th October, 1346, with four hundred men-at-arms, to collect forage and provisions, when, at Ferry on the Hill, he unexpectedly found himself in presence of the whole English army, then on their march from Bishop Auckland, where they had assembled, toward Sunderland. His forces being totally inadequate to make a stand, the Scottish commander endeavored, but unsuccessfully, to retreat. He was attacked, charged, routed, and suffered great loss. He and the remains of his division had but time to gallop into the Scottish camp and give the alarm, when the enemy were upon them.

The Scottish army was hastily drawn up in three divisions, as well as the broken and subdivided nature of the ground permitted. The right was commanded by the Earl of Moray; the centre by the king in person; the left by the Knight of Liddisdale, the steward of Scotland, and the Earl of Dunbar. This arrangement was hardly accomplished ere the English archers, to the number of ten thousand, came within sight. An experienced commander, Sir John de Graham, foreseeing the fatal consequences which were to ensue, entreated the king to permit him to charge the archers with a body of cavalry. "Give me," he said, "but one hundred horse; I will be answerable for riding them down, and dispersing them." "But, to speak truth," says the old historian Fordun, "de Graham could not obtain a single horseman." The reason might be, that the loss at Ferry Hill, that same morning, had fallen chiefly on the Scottish men-at-arms, and that they had been thus rendered to a great degree unserviceable; but it is more generally attributed to the caprice and wilfulness of the young king. Graham attempted with his own followers to make the desired manoeuvre; but being far too few to make the necessary impression on the archers, they were beaten off, and himself escaped with difficulty. The unerring shower of arrows then commenced, and flew without intermission against the Scots as thick as hail, and they were at the same time charged by the men-at-arms and billmen. The numerous enclosures cramped and interrupted their system of defence, and at length the right wing, under the Earl of Moray, began to fly. The English cavalry broke down on them, and completed the rout. They were thrown into complete disorder and then flight, which afforded the English an opportunity to attack the division of the king at once upon the left flank, now uncovered, and on the front. Amid repeated charges, and the most dispiriting slaughter by the continuous discharge of the English arrows, David showed that he had the courage though not the talents of his father. He was twice severely wounded with arrows, but continued to encourage to the last the few of his peers and officers who were still fighting around him. At length, in a close melee, a Northumberland knight, named Copland, grappled with David, and made him prisoner, but not before the king had struck out two of Copland's front teeth with his gauntlet.

On the fall of the royal banner, the steward and the Earl of March, who had not as yet sustained much loss, despairing of being able to aid the king or restore the battle, with-drew from the field in tolerable order, and carried their division and such as rallied under their standards back into Scotland. David II., it has been thought, considered this retreat as resembling a desertion, the more suspicious, as the next heir to the crown was at its head. The captive king was conveyed to London, and afterward, in solemn procession, to the Tower, attended by a guard of twenty thousand men, and all the city companies in complete pageantry. There were made prisoners with David Bruce the Earls of Fife, Monteith, and Wigton, as also the Knight of Liddisdale, who apparently had put himself into that predicament by his advancing to support the king, since he might otherwise have retreated with the steward and the Earl of March, whose command he shared. About fifty barons had the same fate.

There remained slain on the fatal field of Neville's Cross the Earls of Moray and Strathern, David de la Hay, the high constable of Scotland, Robert Keith the great marshal, the chamberlain, and the chancellor, with very many men of rank. Of the lower classes, at least fifteen thousand are computed to have fallen.

The nation of Scotland was but beginning to draw its breath after its unparalleled sufferings during the civil war, when it was, to all appearance, totally prostrated by the blow to which David had imprudently exposed his realm. The whole border counties of Scotland surrendered them-selves without attempting an unavailing defence. The line of the frontiers was carried northward to the southern borders of Lothian, and extended between Colbrand's Path and the Soltra Hills, and was afterward pushed still further north, for it finally ran between Carlops and Crosscryne.

The king of England abused his victory by cruelty. He brought two of his noble captives, the Earl of Monteith, and Duncan, earl of Fife, to trial, for having turned to Bruce's party, after having been liegemen to Baliol, and, like a similar example of modern times, he transmitted to the judges with the commission for trying the prisoners a scroll of the doom previously fixed by himself and his privy-council. The decision of a court so well instructed in its duty was no matter of question. Both earls were convicted of high treason, and the Earl of Monteith suffered the hideous punishment annexed to that crime by the English law.

Yet while thus severely punishing those who had been traitors, as it was called, to Baliol, Edward had no purpose of restoring to his ally any delegated power in Scotland. The ex-king had, since his repeated expulsion from his kingdom, lived upon appointments afforded him from England, and acted more as a lieutenant of the English marches than a prince having a right to the Scottish throne, nor did the victory of Neville's Cross extend his authority. On the contrary, the English barons Lucy, Dacre, and Umfraville received a commission to accept the allegiance which it was supposed the humbled inhabitants of Scotland would be willing universally to transfer to King Edward in person.

Upon this, however, as well as other occasions of imminent peril, the Scottish people, on the very brink of ruin as an independent nation, found a remedy in their own daunt-less courage. The nobility who had escaped from the field of Neville's Cross restored the steward of Scotland, heir of the crown, to the regency of the kingdom, in place of the imprisoned king. Yielding up the southern provinces, which he could not defend, the steward placed the country north of the Forth in as strong a posture as he could, and amid terror and disturbance maintained a show of government and good order. At this critical period William, Lord Douglas, returned from France, where he had been bred to arms, and, with the active valor of his uncle, the good Lord James, expelled the English invaders from his own domains of Douglas Dale, and in process of time from Ettricke Forest and Teviotdale, provinces of which the warlike population had been long followers of this chivalrous family.

The consequences of these successes would probably have been a furious invasion of Scotland, had it depended entirely upon the will of Edward III. But the consent of the English barons was necessary, and they were little disposed to aid in a renewal of those expensive and destructive hostilities which had been so often and so fruitlessly waged against Scotland. The king of England, therefore, reluctantly consented to a truce with the steward, which he renewed from time to time, as he began to conceive designs of at once filling his coffers with a large ransom for his royal prisoner, David, and to secure a right of succession to the Scottish throne by other means than open war.

With this view, the royal captive was treated with more kindness than at first, and (to sharpen, perhaps, his appetite for restoration to freedom and to his kingdom) he was allowed to visit Scotland, on making oath and finding host-ages to return in a time limited. Impatient as his predecessor William the Lion, David seems to have been ready to submit his kingdom to the sovereignty of Edward, and yield up once more the question of supremacy, in order to obtain his personal freedom. He appears even to have taken some steps for that purpose. Two instruments re-main, by which David recognizes the title of Edward as lord paramount, and agrees to take the oath of homage. The purpose of his temporary liberation being partly to give him an opportunity of sounding the opinion and sentiments of his people on this important point, the English commissioners were empowered to protract his term of absence, if they should think the execution of a treaty on such a foundation could be advanced by it. But when the pulse of the Scottish nobles was sounded on this subject, they made a unanimous declaration, that though they would joyfully impoverish themselves to purchase with money the freedom of their sovereign, they would never agree to surrender, for that or any other object, the independence of their country. David was therefore obliged to return to his captivity.

Mr. Tytler conjectures that it was as a subsidiary part of this agreement between the two kings that Edward III. entered into a sort of treaty with the Knight of Liddisdale, also a prisoner in England since the battle of Neville's Cross, by which the latter, assuming a treasonable independence, and renouncing, under a thin and affected disguise, the allegiance and duty which he owed to his own king and country, became bound to admit Englishmen to pass through his territories at all times, and for all purposes; engaged to keep on foot a body of men for the service of Edward; and, in short, transferred to the English king those military services which he owed to his native country. The consideration for this treacherous desertion was his liberation from prison, a grant by King Edward of the lands and lordship of Liddisdale and the castle of Hermitage, with some possessions in the mountains of Annandale. We can hardly think that the whole of this treaty was known to David, although it is probable he was aware that the Knight of Liddisdale was disposed to favor an alliance with England. But, whether with or without the knowledge of his sovereign, too certain it is, to borrow the pathetic language of Lord Hailes, that, "thus in an evil hour did Sir William Douglas at once cancel the merit of former achievements, and, for the possession of a precarious inheritance, transmit his name to posterity in the roll of time-servers and traitors."

The Knight of Liddisdale's schemes, indeed, were baffled almost as soon as formed. He had not long been in possession of the freedom thus basely obtained, before he was waylaid and slain, while hunting in Ettricke Forest,1 by his own kinsman and godson, William, lord of Douglas. The contemporary historians are at a loss whether to ascribe this act of violence on the part of Lord Douglas to domestic jealousy or to revenge for the murder of Ramsay and that of Sir David Berkeley, assassinated by the command of the Knight of Liddisdale while he was yet captive in London, July 13, 1354. But, in our time, the knowledge having emerged of Liddisdale's traitorous engagement with Ed-ward, we can easily conceive that Lord Douglas may have taken his kinsman's life as that of a traitor to the kingdom, and a dangerous rival in his own family rights.

Shortly after this incident, a treaty for the ransom of David was agreed upon by commissioners at Newcastle, for ninety thousand marks sterling, which sum was to be paid up by instalments of ten thousand marks yearly. All the nobility of the kingdom, and all the merchants, were to become bound for the regular payment of these large sums. The greater part of the Scottish nobles thought this an exorbitant demand for the liberty of a prince of moderate talents, without heirs of his body, and attached to idle pleasures. While the estates were doubting whether or not the treaty should be ratified, the arrival of a brave French knight, De Garencieres, with a small but selected body of knights and esquires, and the large sum of forty thousand moutons of gold, to be distributed among the Scots nobles on condition of their breaking the truce and invading England, decided their resolution. They readily adopted, at whatever future risk, the course which was attended with receiving money, instead of that which involved their own paying it. Indeed, the Northumbrian borderers themselves made the first aggression, by invading and spoiling the lands of the Earl of March. The Douglas and the Earl of March determined on reprisals.

The Scottish nobles conducted their inroad as men well acquainted with the stratagems of border warfare. A strong advance party of five hundred men was sent into Northumberland under command of Sir William Ramsay (son of the murdered Sir Alexander), while the two earls with the main body remained in ambush at a place called Nesbit, within the Scottish frontier. Ramsay speedily swept together a great spoil, and proceeded, according to his instructions, to drive them into Scotland, under the full view of the garrison of Norham. Fired at this insult, Sir Thomas Gray, governor of the castle, rushed out at the head of a select body of men-at-arms, and pursuing Ramsay, who retreated before him, fell into the ambuscade which had been laid for him, and, after a most chivalrous defence, was defeated and made prisoner.

Another, though momentary gleam of success, shone on the Scottish arms. The Earls of Angus and March, assisted by the French auxiliaries, made themselves masters of the important town of Berwick, but failed to obtain possession of the castle. At this important crisis, the French, who had done various feats of arms under Eugene de Garencieres, took their leave and returned home, disgusted with the service in Scotland. Their national valor induced them to face with readiness the dangers of the warfare ; but their manners and habits made them impatient of the rough fare and fierce manners of their allies.

Edward III. no sooner heard of the defeat at Nesbit, and the surprise of Berwick, than he passed over from Calais, and appeared before the town with a great part of that veteran army which had been so often victorious in France, and large reinforcements, who emulated their valor. His whole army amounted to eighty thousand men. The Scots who had gained the town had had no time to store them-selves with provisions, or make other preparations for de-fence. They were not, besides, in possession of the castle, from which they were liable to be attacked, while the king of England should storm the walls. They capitulated, there-fore, for permission to evacuate the town, of which Edward obtained possession by the terror of his appearance alone.

Berwick regained, it was now the object of Edward III. to march into Scotland, and to put a final end to the interruptions which the Scottish wars so repeatedly offered to his operations in France. He determined, being now in possession of all means supposed adequate to the purpose, to make a final conquest of the kingdom, and forcibly unite it, as his grandfather had joined Wales, to the larger and richer portion of the island.

But as, like that grandfather, Edward III. had not leisure to conquer kingdoms for other men, it was necessary for him to clear the way of the claims of Baliol, whom he had hitherto professed to regard as the legitimate king of Scotland. This was easily arranged ; for Edward Baliol was, in the hands of Edward III., a far more flexible tool than his father had proved in those of Edward I. Being a mere phantom, whom Edward could summon upon the scene and dismiss at pleasure, he was probably very easily molded to the purpose of the king of England, and of free consent and goodwill underwent the ceremony of degradation, to which his father, after failing in all attempts at resistance, had been compelled to submit, and which procured him the dishonorable nickname of Toom-tabard, or Empty Jacket. Edward Baliol appeared before Edward attired in all the symbols of royalty, of which he formally divested himself, and laying his golden crown at the feet of the English king, ceded to him all right, title, and interest, which he had or might claim in the sovereignty of Scotland. The causes inducing him to this transference and surrender the cedent alleged to be, first, the advance of old age, and the want of heirs to succeed him; secondly, his high obligations to the English king, his especial affection for him, and the nearness of blood which existed between them; together with the ingratitude and rebellion of his Scottish relations and subjects, and in general his desire to promote the advantage of both nations. Such were the pretexts; but in reality Baliol possessed no interest whatever in Scotland; he was a mere stipendiary and pensioner of England, and Edward was now desirous to be rid of him, and either to acquire the crown of Scotland to himself directly by virtue of Baliol's cession in his favor, or, if that project should fail, to achieve the same object by making some composition with the imprisoned David, whom he found not indisposed to agree to a settlement of the crown on a son of the king of England, in exchange for his own liberty. In guerdon of his pliancy, Baliol, when retiring into private life, was to be endowed by Edward III. with a sum of five thousand marks, and a stipend or annuity of two thousand pounds sterling a year. With this splendid income Edward Baliol retired into privacy and obscurity, and is never again mentioned in history. The spirit of enterprise which dictated the invasion of Scotland in 1332, and the adventurous attack upon the Scottish encampment at Dupplin Moor, shows itself in no other part of his conduct, which may lead us to think that an attempt so daring was no suggestion of his own mind, but breathed into it by the counsels of some master-spirit among his councillors. In battle he showed the bravery of a soldier; but in other respects he never seems to have displayed talents whether for war or peace. He died childless in the year 1363; and thus ended in his person the line of Baliol, whose pretensions had cost Scotland so dear.

The campaign which Edward designed should be decisive of the fate of Scotland now approached. The Scottish nobles, more wise in calamity than success, taught and convinced by experience of the danger of encountering the enemy in pitched battle and in the open field, resolved to practice the lessons of defensive war which had been bequeathed to them by their deliverer, King Robert. Time was, however, required to lay the country waste, to withdraw the inhabitants, and to take the other precautions necessary for this stern and desolating species of resistance. For this purpose Earl Douglas was sent to King Edward, to protract time as long as he could with offers of negotiation. He succeeded in obtaining a truce of ten days, during the greater part of which he remained in the English camp, and then left it, exulting in having obtained the necessary space for defensive preparations, of which his countrymen had made excellent use.

Scotland was now somewhat in the same condition as when invaded in 1322, but thus far worse situated, that, as Edward III. was a heroic character a hundred times more formidable than his father, so the chiefs whom Scot-land had now to oppose against the victor, at whose name France trembled, were as far inferior in talents to the Bruce. They were imbued, however, with his sentiments, and were determined to act upon them; and thus being dead, King Robert might be said still to direct the Scottish army.

Edward no sooner entered Scotland than he found his troops in want of every species of supply save what they bore along with them. The villages and farmyards were silent, and vacant alike of men, grain, and cattle. Within the circuit of an ordinary foraging party, no species of supply was to be found. If any ventured beyond the reach of speedy and instant support, they were overwhelmed by the Scots, who, lying in ambush in glens, morasses, and forests, pounced on them from all sides, and gave no quarter. Incensed at the difficulties and privations by which he was surrounded, and conscious that he had been overreached by Douglas in the previous negotiation, Edward vented his wrath in reckless and indiscriminate destruction, burning every town and village which he approached, without sparing the edifices which were dedicated to Heaven and holy uses. The fine abbey church at Haddington, called the Lamp of Lothian, from the beauty of its architecture, was burned down, and the monastery, as well as the town itself, utterly destroyed. These ravages caused the period (February, 1356) to be long remembered by the title of the Burnt Candlemas.

The vehemence of Edward's passion, and the furious manner in which he vented it, might soothe him with feelings of gratified vengeance, but could neither find provisions for his men nor forage for his army, and man and horse began to sink under privation approaching to famine. Edward had expected to meet his victualling ships, which had been despatched to Berwick; but no sail appeared on the shipless seas. After waiting ten days among the ruins of Haddington, his difficulties increasing with every minute, Edward at length learned that a storm had dispersed his fleet, not one of which had been able to enter the Firth of Forth. Retreat was now inevitable : the sufferings of the English soldiers rendered it disorderly, and it was attended with proportional loss. The Scots, from mountains, dingles, forests, and path-less wildernesses, approached the English army on every side, watching it as the carrion crows and ravens wait on a tainted flock, to destroy such as fall down through weakness. To avoid returning through the wasted province of Berwickshire, Edward involved himself in the defiles of the upper part of Teviotdale and Ettricke Forest, where he suffered much loss from the harassing attacks of Douglas, and on one occasion very narrowly escaped being made prisoner.

The failure of this great enterprise, the fifth in which the attempt of invasion had been foiled, seems to have induced Edward to resort to other means than those of open and avowed hostility for the establishment of his power in Scot-land, an object which he conceived to be still within his reach. The temper of his royal prisoner, David Bruce, was now, by his long confinement in England, become well known to him, and he doubted not that by some agreement with the selfish prince he might secure that interest in Scotland and its government of which the people were so jealous. A preliminary step to such an intrigue was the delivery of David from his long captivity, and the establishment of peace between the nations.

By the final agreement between the commissioners for each kingdom, October 3, 1357, David's ransom, augmented since the last treaty, was fixed at one hundred thousand marks, to be discharged by partial payments of ten thou-sand marks yearly. The nobles, churchmen, and burgesses of Scotland bound themselves to see the instalments regularly paid; and three nobles of the highest rank, who might, however, be exchanged for others of the same degree from time to time, together with twenty young men of quality, the son of the steward being included, were surrendered to England as hostages. Thus was David restored to freedom, eleven years after having been made prisoner at the battle of Neville's Cross. The terms, on the whole, were rather more severe than those proposed three years before, when the treaty was broken off by the interest of France.

The first thing, after his return, which marked the tendency of David's political feelings and attachments was his predilection for visits to England, and long residences there, which became so frequent as to excite a feeling among his subjects that they did but waste their substance in needlessly ransoming a sovereign who preferred the land of his captivity to his own dominions. A trifling incident, also, occurred soon after his liberation, which manifested an arrogant, vain, and unfeeling temper. As the people, eager to see their long-absent king, pressed into his presence with more affection than reverence, David snatched a mace from an attendant, and laying about him with his own royal hand, taught his liege subjects in future to put their loyal feelings under more ceremonial restraint.

A species of intimacy, in which Edward trusted to find his advantage, was now encouraged between his dominions and Scotland. Licenses were given to traders, to pilgrims, natives of both countries, to youth of quality desirous of receiving education at the English universities, to all, in short, who could allege a reasonable cause for visiting the English dominions. The Scottish nobles were welcomed when they visited the English court. This liberal line of conduct was no doubt designed to dazzle the eyes of the Scots with the superior wealth and splendor of their powerful neighbors; and to engage them in such friendly transactions and relations as might smooth down the prejudices which had been the natural growth of so many years' war. All these were fair and laudable objects; but the king of England sought them with a sinister and selfish purpose.

The weakness of David, who had shown himself willing, would his subjects have permitted him, to sacrifice to Ed-ward the independence of Scotland, by acknowledging him as lord paramount, had encouraged the king of England to propose that, in place of the steward of Scotland, the grand-son of Robert Bruce by his daughter Marjory, Lionel, duke of Clarence, the third son of Edward III. himself, should be called to succeed to the crown of Scotland. This project seems to have been kept closely concealed from the Scottish nation at large until the month of March, 1363, when David Bruce ventured to bring it himself before the estates of the Scottish parliament, convoked to meet at Scone. The king of Scotland had lately become a widower, by the death of Queen Joanna, during one of her visits to England. This makes it seem more extraordinary that he should desire the substitution of an English prince in the succession of the crown, since David might justly have apprehended that if, in the case of probable events, he himself might marry again and have children, the king of England would not have brooked to see the hope of his son's succession blighted, even by the birth of heirs of his own body. Undeterred by this motive, powerful as it might be thought, David Bruce proposed to the estates of Scotland, "that, in the event of his dying without heirs, they should settle the crown on one of the sons of the king of England. He particularly recommended the Duke Lionel of Clarence as a worthy object of their choice, hinted that this would insure a constant peace between the two nations of Britain, and become the means to induce the king of England to resign, formally and for-ever, all pretensions to the feudal supremacy which had been the cause of such fatal struggles."

The estates of Scotland listened with sorrow and indignation to such a proposition, coming as it did from the lips of their sovereign, the son of the heroic Robert Bruce. Instantly and unanimously they replied, "that they would never permit an Englishman to rule over them; that, by solemn acts of settlement sworn to in parliament, the steward of Scotland was called to the crown in default of the present king or issue of his body; that he was a brave man, and worthy of the succession: from which, therefore, they re-fused to exclude him, by preferring the son of an alien enemy."

King David received, doubtless, this blunt refusal, which necessarily inferred a severe personal reproach, with shame and mortification, but made no reply ; and the parliament, passing to other matters, appointed commissioners to labor at the great work of converting the present precarious truce between England and Scotland into a steady and permanent peace.

But the proposal of altering the destination of the crown, although apparently passed from or withdrawn, remained tenaciously rooted in the minds of those whose interests had been assailed by it. The steward and his sons, with many of his kindred, the Earls of March, Douglas, and other southern barons, assumed arms, and entered into bonds or leagues to prevent, they said, the alteration of the order of succession as fixed in the days of Bruce. The king armed in his turn, not, as he alleged, to enforce an alteration of the succession, but to restore good order, and compel the associated lords to lay down their arms, in which he was successful. The steward and his associates submitted them-selves, awed by the unexpected spirit displayed by the king, and the numerous party which continued to adhere to him. Stewart himself, together with Douglas, March, and others associated in the league, were contented to renounce the obligation in open parliament, convened at Inchmurdoch, May 14, 1363. The steward, upon the same occasion, swore on the Gospels true liegedom and fealty to David, under the penalty of forfeiting not only his own life and lands, but his and bis family's title of succession to the throne. In recompense of this prompt return to the duty of a subject, as well as to soothe the apprehensions for national independence which the proposal of the king had excited, the right of succession to the throne, as solemnly established in the steward and his sons, was fully recognized, and the Earldom of Carrick, once a title of Robert Bruce, was conferred on his eldest son, afterward Robert III.

The imprudent David had hardly ratified the proceedings of the parliament of Scone, ere, forgetful of the danger he had lately incurred, he repaired to London, and renewed with Edward III. those intrigues which had for their object the alteration of the succession. A new plan was now drawn up for this purpose, at a conference held between the two kings and certain selected counsellors, November 23, 1368. By this the king of England, Edward III., was him-self to be declared heir of King David, in case the former should die without issue male. Twenty-seven conditions followed, the object of most of which seems to have been to reconcile the Scottish people to the sway of an English monarch, by imparting to them a share in the advantages of English trade, by ratifying to North Britain its laws and independence as a separate kingdom, and, above all, by discharging the ransom, which continued a heavy burden upon Scotland, of which only a tenth part had been yet paid. The national pride was to be flattered by the restoration of the fatal stone of inauguration, on which it was proposed that the king of England himself should be crowned at Scone, after the Scottish manner. All claim of supremacy was to be renounced, and the independence of Scotland, in Church and State, was carefully provided for, together with an obligation on Edward, when he should succeed to the throne, binding him to use Scottish counsellors in all the national concerns of the kingdom, and to employ native Scottishmen in all offices of trust. But the same schedule of articles contains a clause for giving the English king the command of the Scottish national and feudal levies; a condition which alone must have had the consequence of placing the country at Edward's unlimited disposal. The minutes of this conference open with a provision of strict secrecy, and a declaration that what follows is not to be considered as anything finally resolved upon or determined, but merely as the heads of a plan to be hereafter examined more maturely, and adopted, altered, or altogether thrown aside at pleasure. By the last article the king of Scotland undertook to sound the inclinations of his people respecting this scheme, and report the result to the English king within fifteen days after Easter. It is probable that David, on his return to Scotland, found the scheme totally impracticable.

A circumstance of personal imprudence now added to the difficulties by which King David was surrounded. In 1364, with a violence unbecoming his high rank and mature age, he fell in love with a beautiful young woman, called Catherine Logie, daughter of Sir John Logie, executed for accession to that plot against Robert Bruce which was prosecuted and punished in the times of the Black Parliament. The young lady was eminently beautiful; and the king, finding he could not satisfy his passion otherwise, gave her his hand in marriage. This unequal alliance scandalized his haughty nobles, and seems to have caused an open rupture between David and his kinsman the steward, whose views to the crown were placed in danger of being disappointed, it the fair lady should bear a son to her royal husband. It was probably on account of some quarrel arising out of this subject of discord that King David seems to have thrown the steward, with his son, the Lord of Badenoch, into prison, where both were long detained.

The accomplishment of a general and enduring peace between the two kingdoms was now the occupation of commissioners. The payment of the ransom of David was the principal obstacle. The first instalments had been discharged with tolerable regularity. For this effect the Scottish parliament had made great sacrifices. The whole wool of the kingdom, apparently its most productive subject of export, was directed to be delivered up to the king at a low rate, and the surplus produced over prime cost in disposing of the commodity to the foreign merchants in Flanders was to be applied in discharge of the ransom. A property tax upon men of every degree was also imposed and levied. From these funds the sum of twenty thousand marks had been raised and paid to England. But since these payments the destined sources had fallen short. The Scots had applied to the pope, who having already granted to the king a tenth of the ecclesiastical benefices for the term of three years, refused to authorize any further tax upon the clergy. They solicited France, who, as her own king was unransomed and in captivity in England, had a fair apology for declining further assistance, unless under condition that the Scots would resume the war with England, in which case they promised a contribution of fifty thousand marks toward the ransom of King David.

Scotland being thus straitened and without resources, the stipulated instalments of the ransom necessarily fell into arrear, and heavy penalties were, according to the terms of the treaty, incurred for default of payment. Edward acted the part of a lenient creditor. He was less intent on payment of the ransom than to place the Scottish nation in so insolvent a condition that the estates might be glad, in one way or other, to compromise that debt by a sacrifice of their independence. He could not, indeed, use the readiest mode of compelling payment by summoning the Scottish monarch to return to captivity, without depriving himself of a tractable and willing agent for forwarding his views in Scotland, and probably, at the saine time, throwing that country into the control of the steward, the decided enemy of English influence. The penalties and arrears were now computed to amount to one hundred thousand pounds, to be paid by instalments of six thousand marks yearly. The truce was prolonged for about three years. These payments, though most severe on the nation of Scotland, seem to have been made good with regularity by means of the taxes which the Scottish parliament had imposed for defraying them : so that in 1369 the truce between the nations was continued for fourteen years, and the English conceded that the balance of the ransom, amounting still to fifty-six thousand marks, should be cleared by annual payments of four thou-sand marks. In this manner the ransom of David was completely discharged, and a receipt in full was granted by Richard II. in the seventh year of his reign. These heavy but necessary exactions were not made without internal struggles.

The northern barons and Celtic chiefs were, for a short time, in open insurrection against payment of the imposts ; but were put down by the steadiness of the parliament, and one of those starts of activity into which the indolent but resolute spirit of David Bruce was sometimes awakened. He marched into the northwest against John of the Isles, and reducing that turbulent and powerful chief to subjection, compelled him to submit to the tax imposed by parliament, and exacted hostages from him for remaining in allegiance.

Family discord broke out in the royal family. Catherine Logie, the young and beautiful queen, was expensive, like persons who are suddenly removed from narrow to opulent circumstances. She was fond of changing place, of splendor in retinue, dress, and entertainment; perhaps, being young and beautiful, she also liked personal admiration. David's passion was satiated, and he was desirous to dissolve the unequal marriage which he had so imprudently formed. The bishops of Scotland pronounced a sentence of divorce, but upon what grounds we are left ignorant by historians. Catherine Logie appealed to the pope from the sentence of the Scottish Church, and went to Avignon to prosecute the cause by means of such wealth as she had amassed during her continuance in power, which is said to have been considerable. Her appeal was heard with favor by the pope; but she did not live to bring it to an issue, as she died abroad, in 1369.

After the divorce of this lady by the Scottish prelates, the steward and his son were released from prison, and restored to the king's favor, which plainly showed by what influence they had incurred disgrace and captivity.

Little more remains to be said of David H. He became affected with a mortal illness, and died in the castle of Edinburg, at the early age of forty-seven, and in the forty-fifth year of his reign, February 22, 1370. He had courage, affability, and the external graces which become a prince. But his life was a uniform contrast to the patriotic devotion of his father. He exacted and received the most painful sacrifices at the hands of his subjects, and never curbed himself in a single caprice, or denied himself a single indulgence, in requital of their loyalty and affection. In the latter years of his life, he acted as the dishonorable tool of England, and was sufficiently willing to have exchanged, for paltry and personal advantages, the independence of Scotland, bought by his heroic father at the expense of so many sufferings, which terminated in ruined health and premature death.

The reign of David II. was as melancholy a contrast to that of his father as that of Robert I. had been brilliant when contrasted with his predecessors. Yet we recognize in it a nearer approach to civil polity, and a more absolute commixture of the different tribes by which Scotland was peopled into one general nation, obedient to a single government.

Even the chiefs of the Isles and Highlands were so much subdued as to own the allegiance of the Scottish king, to hold seats in his parliaments, and resign, though reluctantly, much of that rude and tumultuous independence which they had formerly made their boast. The power of these formidable chiefs was much reduced, not only by the actual restraint exercised over them by the sovereign and his lieu-tenants, often at the head of an armed force, but by the less justifiable policy which the sovereign is said to have exercised, of stirring up one chieftain against another, and thus humbling and diminishing the power of the whole. Still the separation of the Highlands from the Lowlands was that between two separate races; and though the king's sovereignty was acknowledged in both, the ordinary course of law was only current in the more civilized country, and we shall presently see that the lords of the Isles gave repeated disturbances to the Scottish government. The nation, at the same time, became more like that with which we ourselves are acquainted. A few great families can in-deed trace their descent from the period of Robert Bruce; but a far greater number are first distinguished in the reign of his son, where the lists of the battle of Durham contain the names of the principal nobility and gentry in modern Scotland, and are the frequent resource of the genealogists. The spirit of commerce advanced in the time of David I. against all the disadvantages of foreign and domestic warfare.

In the parliaments of 1368 and 1369 a practice was introduced, for the first time apparently, of empowering commit-tees of parliament to prepare and arrange, in previous and secret meetings, the affairs of delicacy and importance which were afterward to come before the body at large. As this led to investing a small cabal of the representatives with the exclusive power of garbling and selecting the subjects for parliamentary debate, it necessarily tended to limit the free discussion so essential to the constitution of that body, and finally assumed the form of that very obnoxious institution called Lords of the Articles, who, claiming the preliminary right of examining and rejecting at their pleasure such measures as were to be brought before parliament, became a severe restraint on national freedom.

Amid the pestilence and famine, which made repeated ravages in Scotland during this unhappy reign, the Scottish national spirit never showed itself more energetically deter-mined on resisting the English domination to the last. Particular chiefs and nobles were no doubt seduced from their allegiance, but there was no general or undisturbed pause of submission and apathy. The nation was strong in its very weakness; for as the Scots became unequal to the task of assembling national armies, they were saved from the consequences of such general actions as Dunbar, Halidon, and Berwick, and obliged to limit themselves to the defensive species of war best suited to the character of the country, and that which its inhabitants were so well qualified to wage.