from

History of Scotland

The events of Halidon Hill cannot be grouped and distinguished like those of a war with two sides having a question of nationality or of principle to divide them. It was not even the simple question between dynasties; with this there were mixed up considerations of person, connection, and property all over the country, and the quarrelling is intermixed like the personal contests in an excited mob. At one time we find the new king overmastered by numbers near Arran in Dumfriesshire, fleeing half naked across the English border for protection. Then there are raids across the border, and England, which professed to let the contest in Scotland work its own way, now finds that the Peace of Northampton has been broken by the Scots. It was determined to punish the aggression,, and give substantial aid to the new king. This gives for a time distinctness to events-it is again England and Scotland measuring swords. The usual summonses and commissions were issued, and a great

English army was assembled at Newcastle in the spring of 1333. Berwick was, as formerly, to be the first object. The vast system of fortifications for which Edward I. had given the practical hint had been sedulously carried out, making indeed two great strongholds-a castle and a fortified town, each under its own governor. Again a trial was made by a ship attack from the estuary of the Tweed, but it was beaten off as before. The land siege was, however, pressed by a great army, with every siege engine of the day. The Scots meanwhile, under the guardian, tried the old game of a formidable raid into England, threatening to carry off the Queen of England from Bamborough Castle; but this great Norman fortress was too strong to be in serious danger from a light-armed flying force, and the English army was not to be diverted away from its chief object. The English force was far too powerful to be long resisted. There were treaties with the besieged, who were accused of bad faith in still holding out; but the end was, that on a given day the town and castle were to be yielded if they were not succored, and the test of an effectual succor was to be two hundred of the Scots army actually joining the garrison of the town.

The Scots army marched out of England, and crossed the Tweed at a safe distance. They found the English posted on Halidon Hill, rising westward of the town, and now approached by rows of villas. The ground around its lower slopes was then a marsh, which strengthened the position. The Scots army were led bv the new regent or guardian, Douglas, and by the Stewart of Scotland, yet a youth. There were some of the old tried captains of Bruce's wars present, but in inferior posts. Here the conditions of Bannockburn were almost inverted. The Scots, if they would fight the English, must attack them on their own ground. The assailants on foot were struggling through the morass, where they were exposed to the deadly skill of that department of the English army which was ever becoming more formidable-the bowmen. There was no possibility of dispersing them with cavalry, and the Scots army, ere it reached the English, was but an attenuated fragment of itself, easily dealt with. There was no escape from an exterminating slaughter, and the warlike renown of England almost recovered at Halidon Hill what it had lost at Bannockburn.

Berwick had to yield. Though afterwards repeatedly changing hands, the town never remained so long in the possession of Scotland as to be more to the country than a military post of the enemy held for a time and then retaken. Hence, from the day of Halidon Hill, Berwick was virtually the one permanent acquisition to England by the great war, unless we may include the Isle of Man. This, the farthest south of the groups of islands which held but a light and fluctuating allegiance to the crown of Scotland, was occupied and retained by England. Allusion has already been made to the trouble given for centuries to English legislators and men of business by this acquisition of Berwick, after the boundaries of England had been long adjusted. In mere topography Berwick held rank as a respectable market-town with a small foreign trade. But owing to its eventful career, the place was long burdened with an official staff, which, in its nomenclature at least, was pompous as that of a sovereign state. The English Government, after Scotland was lost, retained the official staff which Edward 1. had designed for the administration of the country. It was huddled together within Berwick as a center, and was in readiness to expand over such districts of southern Scotland as England acquired from time to time-was ready to spread over the whole country when the proper time should come. Soon after the recapture of Berwick, as we shall see, there was a prospect of such expansion. The active field for this body, however, was contracted by -degrees, and at last it was confined to the town and liberties of Berwick, which were thus honored by the possession of a Lord Chancellor, a Lord Chamberlain, and other high officers; while the district had its own Doomsday Book and other records adapted to a sovereignty on the model of the kingdom of England.