Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 3.djvu/82

110 and, encountering Sir Edmund de Cailand, slew him with his own hand. The English party, discouraged by the loss of their leader, and no longer able to withstand the increased impetuosity with which this gallant deed of Sir James had inspired his men, soon fell into confusion, and were put to flight with considerable slaughter. The booty, which, previously to the engagement, had been sent on towards Berwick, was wholly recovered by the Scots.

Following upon this success, and, in some measure connected with it, an event occurred, singularly illustrative of the chivalric spirit of that age. Sir Ralph Neville, an English knight who then resided at Berwick, feeling, it may be supposed, his nation dishonoured, by the praises which the fugitives in the late defeat bestowed upon the great prowess of Douglas, boastingly declared, that he would himself encounter that Scottish knight, whenever his banner should be displayed in the neighbourhood of Berwick. When this challenge reached the ears of Douglas, he determined that the self-constituted rival who uttered it, should not want for the opportunity which he courted. Advancing into the plain around Berwick, Sir James there displayed his banner, as a counter challenge to the knight, calling upon him, at the same time, by herald, to make good his bravado. The farther to incite and irritate the English, he detached a party of his men, who set fire to some villages within sight of the garrison. Neville, at the head of a much more numerous force than that of the Scots, at length issued forth to attack his enemy. The combat was well contested on both sides, till Douglas, encountering Neville hand to hand, soon proved to that brave but over-hardy knight, that he had provoked his fate, for he soon fell under the experienced and strong arm of his antagonist. This event decided the fortune of the field. The English were completely routed, and several persons of distinction made prisoners in the pursuit Taking advantage of the consternation caused by this victory, Sir James plundered and desolated with fire all the country on the north side of the river Tweed, which still adhered to the English interest; and returning in triumph to the forest of Jedburgh, divided among his followers the rich booty which he had acquired, reserving no part of it, as was his generous custom, to his own use.

In the year 1322, the Scots, commanded by Douglas, invaded the counties of Northumberland and Durham; but no record now remains of the circumstances attending this invasion. In the same year, as much by the terror of his name, as by any stratagem, he saved the abbey of Melrose from the threatened attack of a greatly superior force of the English, who had advanced against it for the purposes of plunder. But the service by which, in that last and most disastrous campaign of Edward II. against the Scots, Sir James most distinguished himself, was, in the attempt which he made, assisted by Randolph, to force a passage to the English camp, at Biland, in Yorkshire. In this desperate enterprise, the military genius of Bruce came opportunely to his aid, and he proved successful. Douglas, by this action, may be said to have given a final blow to the nearly exhausted energies of the weak and misguided government of Edward; and to have thus assisted in rendering his deposition, which soon after followed, a matter of indifference, if not of satisfaction to his subjects.

The same active hostility which had on so many occasions, during the life of our great warrior, proved detrimental or ruinous to the two first Edwards, was yet to be exercised with undiminished efficacy upon the third monarch of that name, the next of the race of English usurpers over Scotland. The treaty of truce which the disquiets and necessities of his own kingdom had extorted from Edward II. after his defeat at Biland, having been broken through, as it would seem, not without the secret connivance or approbation of the Scottish king; Edward III., afterwards so famous in English history, but then a minor, collected