Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 1.djvu/152

 year, the Scots made a bold and successful incursion into England, under Randolph and Douglas, and King Edward was obliged, April 1328, to consent to the treaty of Northampton, which acknowledged at once the independency of the Scottish crown, and the right of Robert Bruce to wear it. No more is heard of Edward Baliol, till after the death of Bruce, when he was tempted by the apparent weakness of Scotland under the minority of David II. to attempt the recovery of his birth-right. Two English barons, Henry de Beaumont and Thomas Lord Wake, claimed certain estates in Scotland, which had been declared their property by the treaty of Northampton; Randolph, the Scottish regent, distrusting the sincerity of the English in regard to other articles of this treaty, refused to restore those estates; and the two barons accordingly joined with Baliol in his design. That the English king might not be supposed accessory to so gross a breach of the treaty, he issued a proclamation against their expedition; but they easily contrived to ship four hundred men at arms and three thousand infantry at Holderness, all of whom were safely landed on the coast of Fife, July 31, 1332. Only eleven days before this event, the Scottish people had been bereft of their brave regent, Randolph Earl of Moray, who was almost the last of those worthies by whom the kingdom of Bruce had been won and maintained. The regency fell into the hands of Donald, Earl of Mar, in every respect a feebler man. Baliol, having beat back some forces which opposed his landing, moved forward to Forteviot, near Perth; where the Earl of Mar appeared with an army to dispute his farther progress. As the Scottish forces were much superior in number and position to the English, Baliol found himself in a situation of great jeopardy, and would willingly have retreated to his ships, had that been possible. Finding, however, no other resource than to fight, he led his forces at midnight across the Erne, surprised the Scottish camp in a state of the most disgraceful negligence, and put the whole to the route. This action, fought on the 12th of August, was called the battle of Dupplin. The conqueror entered Perth, and for some time found no resistance to his assumed authority. On the 24th of September, he was solemnly crowned at Scone. The friends of the line of Bruce, though unable to offer a formal opposition, appointed Andrew Moray of Bothwell to be regent in the room of the Earl of Mar, who had fallen at Dupplin. At Roxburgh, on the 23rd of November, Baliol solemnly acknowledged Edward of England for his liege lord, and surrendered to him the town and castle of Berwick, "on account of the great honour and emoluments which he had procured through the good will of the English king, and the powerful and acceptable aid contributed by his people." The two princes also engaged on this occasion to aid each other in all their respective wars. Many of the Scottish chiefs now submitted to Baliol, and it does not appear improbable that he might have altogether retrieved a kingdom which was certainly his by the laws of hereditary succession. But on the 15th of December, the adherents of the opposite dynasty surprised him in his turn at Annan, overpowered his host, and having slain his brother Henry, and many other distinguished men, obliged him to fly, almost naked, and with hardly a single attendant, to England. His subsequent efforts, though not so easily counteracted, were of the same desultory character. He returned into Scotland in March, and lay for some time at Roxburgh, with a small force. In May, 1333, he joined forces with King Edward, and reduced the town of Berwick. The Scottish regent being overthrown at Halidon Hill, July 19, for a time all resistance to the claims of Baliol ceased. In a parliament held at Edinburgh in February, he ratified the former treaty with King Edward, and soon after surrendered to that monarch the whole of the counties on the frontier, together with the province of Lothian, as part of the kingdom of England. His power,