Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/379

A.D. 1331.] He issued write to the judges, commanding them to administer justice firmly, promptly, and without fear or favour, paying no legend whatever to any injunctions from the ministers of the crown or any other power. He sought out and severely punished the abuses in the administration of the state, and exacted from the peers a solemn pledge that they should break off all connection with malefactors—a circumstance which gives us a curious insight into the times, the great barons keeping the robbers and outlaws in pay against each other, and even against the king. This done, Edward turned his attention to what appeared the grand hereditary object of the English crown of that day, the subjugation of Scotland.

The great Robert Bruce, as we have seen, had loft his son David, a mere boy, on the throne. He could not but be anxious for the stability of his position with such a powerful kingdom and martial young king in his immediate neighbourhood, and with the long-pursued claims and attempts of England on Scotland. He had, indeed, taken a strong precaution against the invasion of his son's peace by marrying him to the sister of Edward of England. But the temptation of ambition in princes has almost always proved far stronger than the ties of blood, and so it proved in Edward's case. We might have expected that he would maintain rather than attempt to destroy the happiness and fair establishment of his sister on the throne of Scotland. But the spirit of military domination was as powerful in Edward as in his grandfather. He could not forget that Scotland had nearly been secured by England, and that the English had lost a great prestige at Bannockburn. He burned, therefore, to restore the reputation of the English arms, and complete the design of uniting the whole of the island of Great Britain into one kingdom—the life-long aim and dying command of the great Edward I.

When princes are desirous of pleas of aggression it is never difficult to find such, and in this case they were abundant and plausible. In the treaty of peace and alliance concluded between Bruce and Edward at Northampton, when Joan was affianced to the heir of Scotland, just before Bruoe's death, it was stipulated that both the Scottish families who had lost their estates in Scotland by taking part with the English in the late wars, and the English nobles who had claims on estates there by marriage or heirship, should all be restored to them. The Scotch were admitted; but Bruce, perceiving that the estates of the English were much more valuable than the others, had boon unwilling to allow so many dangerous subjects of the English king to establish themselves in the heart of his realm, where they might become formidable enemies. He had therefore put off their urgent demands of fulfilment of this stipulation, on the plea that it required time and caution to dispossess the potent Scotch barons now holding them. The claim of Lord Henry Percy was conceded; those of the Lords Wake and Beaumont, the latter of whom claimed the earldom of Buchan in right of his wife, were disregarded. Beaumont, a man of great power, and of a determined character, resolved by some means to conquer his right. He urged it upon Edward to redress the wrongs of his subjects; but Edward, now freed from the ascendancy of Mortimer, though nothing loth, pleaded the impossibility of his armed interference in the face of the late solmen treaty and alliance, and he had used persuasions in vain. Probably, he gave these malcontents, however, to understand that he would not prevent them trying to help themselves. Not only was Bruce dead, but his two great warriors and statesmen, Moray and Douglas, also. Moray had been left regent and guardian of the young King David, still only about nine years of ago; but to his vigorous administration had succeeded that of the Earl of Mar, another nephew of Robert Bruce, and a much inferior man.

At this favourable crisis Beaumont turned his attention upon Edward Baliol, the son of John Baliol, who had been in vain placed on the Scottish throne by Edward I. John Baliol had retired to his patrimonial estate in Normandy, where he had died, and where his son Edward had continued to reside in privacy. His pretensions to the Scottish crown had been so decidedly repelled by the Scotch, that he had given up all idea of over reviving them; and for some private offence he had been thrown into prison. There Beaumont found him; and pitching upon him as the very instrument which he needed to authorise a descent on Scotland immediately, on the ground of his sufferings as a private person, obtained his enlargement, and took him away with him to England, the French king suspecting nothing of the real design. There he represented to Edward the splendid opportunity which thus presented itself of regaining the ascendancy over Scotland by putting forward Baliol as claimant of the crown. Edward could not do this openly for many reasons. In the next place, nothing could be more injurious to his character for justice and natural affection, were he with a preponderating force to attack the throne of a minor, and that minor his brother-in-law. In the next place he was bound by a solemn treaty not to assault or prejudice the kingdom of Scotland for four years, and the penalty for the violation of this engagement was £20,000.

The Regent of Scotland, however, as well as the late king, had always admitted the justice of the claims of the disinherited nobles, yet had always evaded all demands for restoration. Edward's plan, therefore, was to meet artifice with artifice; and accordingly he connived at the assembling of Baliol's forces in the north of England, and at the active preparations of the nobles who intended to join him. Umphraville, Earl of Angus, the Lords Beaumont. Wake, Ferrars, Talbot, Fitzwarin, Stafford, and Mowbray had soon an army of 2,500 men assembled on the banks of the Humber. They apprehended that the borders would be strongly armed, and therefore they took their way by sea in a small fleet, which set sail from Ravenspur, an obscure port, and soon landed at Kinghorn, in Fifeshire. The Scots, who detested the Baliols as pretenders under the patronage and for the ultimate purposes of England, flocked in thousands to the national standard against him. The Earl of Fife, too precipitately attacking Baliol's force, was at once defeated, and the invaders marched northward towards Dupplin. Near this place the Regent Mar lay with an army said to number 40,000 men. The river Earn lay between the hostile hosts, and it was evidently the policy of the Scots to delay a general engagement till the Earl of March, who was rapidly advancing from the south of Scotland, came up, when the handful of English must have been surrounded and overpowered. But Baliol, or