Bruce continued to prosper, despite an ill-advised attempt to win
Ireland, in which Edward Bruce fell (1318.) This left the succession,
if Bruce had no male issue, to the children of his daughter, Marjory,
and her husband, the Steward. In 1318 Scotland recovered Berwick, in
1319 routed the English at Mytton-on-Swale. In a Parliament at
Aberbrothock (April 6, 1320) the Scots announced to the Pope, who had
been interfering, that, while a hundred of them survive, they will
never yield to England. In October 1322 Bruce utterly routed the
English at Byland Abbey, in the heart of Yorkshire, and chased Edward
II. into York. In March 1324 a son was born to Bruce named David; on
May 4, 1328, by the Treaty of Northampton, the independence of Scotland
was recognised. In July the infant David married Joanna, daughter of
Edward II.
On June 7, 1329, Bruce died and was buried at Dunfermline; his heart,
by his order, was carried by Douglas towards the Holy Land, and when
Douglas fell in a battle with the Moors in Spain, the heart was brought
back by Sir Simon Lockhart of the Lee. The later career of Bruce,
after he had been excommunicated, is that of the foremost knight and
most sagacious man of action who ever wore the crown of Scotland. The
staunchness with which the clergy and estates disregarded papal
fulminations (indeed under William the Lion they had treated an
interdict as waste-paper) indicated a kind of protestant tendency to
independence of the Holy See.
Bruce's inclusion of representatives of the Burghs in the first
regular Scottish Parliament (at Cambuskenneth in 1326) was a great step
forward in the constitutional existence of the country. The king, in
Scotland, was expected to “live of his own,” but in 1326 the expenses
of the war with England compelled Bruce to seek permission for
taxation.
The heroic generation of Scotland was passing off the stage. The King was a child. The forfeiture by Bruce of the lands of hostile or treacherous lords, and his bestowal of the estates on his partisans, had made the disinherited nobles the enemies of Scotland, and had fed too full the House of Douglas. As the star of Scotland was thus clouded—she had no strong man for a King during the next ninety years—the sun of England rose red and glorious under a warrior like Edward III. The Scottish nobles in many cases ceased to be true to their proud boast that they would never submit to England. A very brief summary of the wretched reign of David II. must here suffice.
First, the son of John Balliol, Edward, went to the English Court, and thither thronged the disinherited and forfeited lords, arranging a raid to recover their lands. Edward III., of course, connived at their preparations.
After Randolph's death (July 20, 1332), when Mar—a sister's son of Bruce—was Regent, the disinherited lords, under Balliol, invaded Scotland, and Mar, with young Randolph, Menteith, and a bastard of Bruce, “Robert of Carrick,” leading a very great host, fell under the shafts of the English archers of Umfraville, Wake, the English Earl of Atholl, Talbot, Ferrers, and Zouche, at Dupplin, on the Earn (August 12, 1332). Rolled up by arrows loosed on the flanks of their charging columns, they fell, and their dead bodies lay in heaps as tall as a lance.
On September 24, Edward Balliol was crowned King at Scone. Later, Andrew Murray, perhaps a son of the Murray who had been Wallace's companion-in-arms, was taken, and Balliol acknowledged Edward III. as his liege-lord at Roxburgh. In December the second son of Randolph, with Archibald, the new Regent, brother of the great Black Douglas, drove Balliol, flying in his shirt, from Annan across the Border. He returned, and was opposed by this Archibald Douglas, called Tineman, the Unlucky, and on July 19, 1333, Tineman suffered, at Halidon Hill, near Berwick, a defeat as terrible as Flodden; Berwick, too, was lost, practically for ever, Tineman fell, and Sir William Douglas, the Knight of Liddesdale, was a prisoner. These Scots defeats were always due to rash frontal attacks on strong positions, the assailants passing between lines of English bowmen who loosed into their flanks. The boy king, David, was carried to France (1334) for safety, while Balliol delivered to Edward Berwick and the chief southern counties, including that of Edinburgh, with their castles.
There followed internal wars between Balliol's partisans, while the patriots were led by young Randolph, by the young Steward, by Sir Andrew Murray, and the wavering and cruel Douglas, called the Knight of Liddesdale, now returned from captivity. In the desperate state of things, with Balliol and Edward ravaging Scotland at will, none showed more resolution than Bruce's sister, who held Kildrummie Castle; and Randolph's daughter, “Black Agnes,” who commanded that of Dunbar. By vast gifts Balliol won over John, Lord of the Isles. The Celts turned to the English party; Edward III. harried the province of Moray, but, in 1337, he began to undo his successes by formally claiming the crown of France: France and Scotland together could always throw off the English yoke.
Thus diverted from Scotland, Edward lost strength there while he warred with Scotland's ally: in 1341 the Douglas, Knight of Liddesdale, recovered Edinburgh Castle by a romantic surprise. But David returned home in 1341, a boy of eighteen, full of the foibles of chivalry, rash, sensual, extravagant, who at once gave deadly offence to the Knight of Liddesdale by preferring to him, as sheriff of Teviotdale, the brave Sir Alexander Ramsay, who had driven the English from the siege of Dunbar Castle. Douglas threw Ramsay into Hermitage Castle in Liddesdale and starved him to death.
In 1343 the Knight began to intrigue traitorously with Edward III.; after a truce, David led his whole force into England, where his rash chivalry caused his utter defeat at Neville's Cross, near Durham (October 17, 1346). He was taken, as was the Bishop of St Andrews; his ransom became the central question between England and Scotland. In 1353 Douglas, Knight of Liddesdale, was slain at Williamshope on Yarrow by his godson, William, Lord Douglas: the fact is commemorated in a fragment of perhaps our oldest narrative Border ballad. French men-at-arms now helped the Scots to recover Berwick, merely to lose it again in 1356; in 1357 David was set free: his ransom, 100,000 merks, was to be paid by instalment. The country was heavily taxed, but the full sum was never paid. Meanwhile the Steward had been Regent; between him, the heir of the Crown failing issue to David, and the King, jealousies arose. David was suspected of betraying the kingdom to England; in October 1363 he and the Earl of Douglas visited London and made a treaty adopting a son of Edward as king on David's demise, and on his ransom being remitted, but in March 1364 his Estates rejected the proposal, to which Douglas had assented. Till 1369 all was poverty and internal disunion; the feud, to be so often renewed, of the Douglas and the Steward raged. David was made contemptible by a second marriage with Margaret Logie, but the war with France drove Edward III. to accept a fourteen years' truce with Scotland. On February 22, 1371, David died in Edinburgh Castle, being succeeded, without opposition, by the Steward, Robert II., son of Walter, and of Marjorie, daughter of Robert Bruce. This Robert II., somewhat outworn by many years of honourable war in his country's cause, and the father of a family, by Elizabeth Mure of Rowallan, which could hardly be rendered legitimate by any number of Papal dispensations, was the first of the Royal Stewart line. In him a cadet branch of the English FitzAlans, themselves of a very ancient Breton stock, blossomed into Royalty.