Bruce and his followers had no need of large forces.1 Death of Ed But soon Edward appeared on the southwest border ward I. 1307. with a powerful army, and prospects looked gloomy for the young rebel, when the great king suddenly died and the advance into Scotland was halted and given up (1307). Edward II. The death of Edward secured the independence of Scotland. His successor, Edward II, was an incompetent king, who permitted himself and the kingdom to be ruled by worthless favorites. This disgusted the English barons who regarded themselves as the true counselors of the king. Under such conditions all plans for the reconquest of Scotland had to be postponed. Meanwhile, Bruce and his men carried on a series of successful attacks on the castles and strongholds that were still in English possession, until after six years Stirling, a position of great strength and strategic importance at the entrance to the Highlands, alone remained in the enemy's hands. The siege 1 Kendall, No. 29. THE BATTLE OF BANNOCKBURN 145 of Stirling awakened the English, and Edward II made preparations to succor the garrison and reduce the country. With a vast army of more than 50,000 men the English king appeared in the neighborhood of Stirling in June, 1314. Robert Bruce with a force only one-third as large took up a position behind Stirling is situated at the gateway into the Highlands and is a strategic point of great importance. Battle of Bannockburn. 1314. the little stream of Bannockburn,1 a few miles southeast of Stirling. The field was well chosen, for in addition to the stream in front the Scotchmen had a swamp on either side, which made a successful attack on the enemy's part very difficult. In the battle that followed, the English host suffered an overwhelming defeat. Scotland secured her freedom and her nationality, and Robert Bruce secured his throne. 1 Cheyney, No. 134; Gardiner, 226; Innes, I, 155-159; Tuell and Hatch, No. 24 (Burns, Scots who hae). The selections from Cheyney and Innes are from different chronicles. See also Bates and Coman, 100-106 (Scott, Lord of the Isles, Canto VI). The 130. Edward II Deposed: the Rule of Mortimer. defeat at Bannockburn completely discredited the government of Edward II. The rule of England fell into the hands of the chief nobles, but their selfishness and incompetence were so Misrule in great that the nation fared even worse for the England. change. After much strife and turmoil the king once more got the upper hand; but his devotion to his favorites alienated all the classes that were of any importance in the state. In 1325 Isabella, the queen, a French princess of low character, found a pretext for a journey to her relatives in France, where she was joined the next year by her eldest son Edward. A conspiracy was formed of which the queen and Roger Mortimer, a wealthy nobleman from the Welsh March, were the chief members. In 1326 the conspirators arrived in England with a foreign host. A parliament was summoned a few months later (1327) which compelled the king to abdicate in favor of his son Edward. Not long afterwards Edward II was murdered. Roger 1328. The rule of the conspirators was brief. The great problem was what attitude the government should take toward Scotland: the English refused to recognize the independence of the Scotch, but were unable to stop their raids across the border.1 Finally in 1328, Roger Mortimer made peace and acknowledged the independence of Robert Bruce's kingdom to the great disgust of the English. Not long afterwards he, too, was slain, the victim of a conspiracy which included the young prince. Edward III, who had been nominally king for a year and was already a husband and father, though only in his sixteenth year, now began his long and adventurous reign of fifty years. Edward III. 131. The Hundred Years' War: the Succession in France. Thirty years of intermittent warfare with their neighbors to the south had unified the Scottish people and intensified their passion for nationality. And what is more important for English history, it led them to seek allies elsewhere: a close 1 Innes, 164-166. THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR 147 relationship sprang up between Scotland and France which endured for nearly three hundred years. Morti- Alliance of mer's treaty was of short duration: war with Scotland soon broke out again, but the new war Scotland and fare came to be closely associated with another and greater conflict, the Hundred Years' War with France. This was The heart of Robert Bruce was buried in this monastery. From a photograph by W. H. Dudley. rather a series of wars, which with long periods of merely passive hostilities continued for more than a century, till final peace was made in 1453. The dispute that introduced this war began in 1328, the year of the truce with Scotland, when the direct male line of the French dynasty expired and a representative of a collateral branch of the family inherited the kingship. Three The French brothers, the sons of Edward I's old enemy, Philip succession. the Fair, had successively mounted the French throne and died leaving no sons.1 On the death of the third and last, Edward III (or rather his advisers in the government, as the king himself was a mere youth) thought seriously of claiming the French crown for himself as the heir of his mother Isabella, who was a daughter of Philip the Fair. But the claim, for which there was no legal basis, was not pressed, and Edward, as lord of Gascony, rendered the usual homage to the new king of France, Philip VI.2 problem. 132. Difficulties in Gascony and Flanders. Ten years passed without any attempt to revive the claim. Conditions were such, however, that war with France was almost inevitable. The Gascon The French king was anxious to get rid of powerful vassals like Edward of Gascony, and eagerly sought a pretext for depriving him of his rights on French soil. Edward III on his side protested against the aid that France continued to render to his Scotch enemies. But more important than either of these considerations were the trade relations that existed between England and Flanders. The Low Countries, or the modern kingdoms of the Netherlands and Belgium, were, in the fourteenth century, a group of more than a dozen little states, whose only bond of union was geographical. Nearly all of these were dependencies of the German kingdom; but Flanders, the most important member 1 The problem of the succession to the French throne in 1328: |