Edward III & the Road to War

The Short “Reign” of Roger Mortimer – The End of the First Scottish War of Independence – The Plot at Nottingham Castle – The Pacification of England – Fourteen Sons and Daughters – A Rebellious Homage – The Death of Robert the Bruce – A Scottish Civil War – The Battle of Dupplin Moor – Edward Balliol Takes the Throne – The Battle of Annon – The Battle of Halidon Hill – Balliol Becomes King – The Return of Andrew Murray – France Enters the Fray – An Escalating Whirlwind – On the Doorstep of the Hundred Years’ War

an aged Edward III

Edward III was fourteen years old when he ascended the throne of England in 1327. Because Edward was in his minority, Henry of Gloucester was named as his guardian—but the real power lay in the hands of Roger Mortimer and the Queen Mother. Mortimer’s first order of business was solidifying his power, and that meant dealing with Edward II, who was still alive. Edward II died on 21 September 1327 at Berkeley Castle, and his body was publicly displayed to stifle any rumors that he was still alive (though many historians, and many of Edward II’s contemporaries, believed his death, and the public display of his body, to be a hoax). With Edward II out of the picture, Mortimer gleefully took the reigns of England. He acquired for himself a number of high-ranking estates and titles and set his teeth against Scotland. The Scots defeated his army at the Battle of Stanhope Park, and his popularity crumbled when he coerced Edward III to sign the defeatist Treaty of Northampton with Scotland in 1328, which brought the First Scottish War of Independence—inaugurated by Edward I in 1296—to an end. Robert the Bruce was recognized as the rightful king of Scotland, and England forfeited all claims to sovereignty over the northern kingdom. The young Edward III was growing disenchanted with Mortimer, and in June of 1330 he knew he had to act: Mortimer and the Queen Mother had a son, threatening Edward’s claim to the throne. Edward and a band of compatriots began working in the shadows to remove Mortimer from England.

In the autumn of 1330, two years after the humiliating peace treaty that had undone everything Edward’s grandfather had achieved, Mortimer summoned a parliament to meet at Nottingham Castle. Mortimer made sure to have an elite security force guarding the castle, and he decreed that only the royal family and their companions could sleep within the castle’s walls. On the night of 19 October, Edward hatched his plan. A small band of knights infiltrated the castle by way of an unknown passage, met the young king in the courtyard, cut the throats of the two knights guarding the Queen Mother’s apartment, and burst inside. Isabella was jolted awake in bed as the knights forced their way into the apartment’s anteroom and captured Mortimer. Isabella, half-clothed, begged the knights to be gentle with her lover, but they manhandled him out of the castle and imprisoned him in the town. The next morning, Mortimer’s family and diehard supporters were rounded up and imprisoned in Nottingham. The next month, November, Mortimer and two men most complicit in his acts were condemned as traitors and sentenced to be hanged. The swift English justice was carried out, and Edward III stepped out of his minority and took the reigns of government. The Queen Mother fared better than her lover: she was exiled into a comfortable, albeit secure, retirement.

Nottingham Castle in the days of Edward III

Though Mortimer was dead, England was rife with divisions; Mortimer, after all, had had plenty of supporters. Edward III’s first order of business was calming his country: he refused to authorize anymore executions and treated Mortimer’s supporters with grace. He commissioned an investigation into his father’s death, but no one was found guilty of foul play (though one person, who may have provided evidence of a breadcrumb trail leading back to the machinations of the Queen Mother, was murdered at sea). Edward’s goal in the commission wasn’t so much to get to the “truth of the matter” but to calm any fears of foul play, and repercussions, among Mortimer’s surviving supporters. Having wooed Mortimer’s supporters back into the fold, Edward turned his attention to England’s social fabric. Mortimer had made a mess of things: the kidnapping and murder of English judges was commonplace, knights and landowners liked to meet out justice on their own terms (usually raiding opponents’ lands), and banditry was rampant with highway robbers ambushing people on the roads and violent gangs roving the dense forests. Edward made local magistrates responsible for law and order, appointed judges unconnected with any particular faction, and passed laws against “hooliganism.” Two years after taking full control of the realm, we find parliament officially divided into two houses (the “Lords” and “Commons”), and English began to replace Norman French as the official language of the law courts. In 1328 Edward took a wife, his cousin Philippa of Hainault, and the two of them would have fourteen children. The descendants of his seven sons and five daughters would contest the English throne for generations, a contest which would climax in the so-called Wars of the Roses from 1455-1485.

Edward's archnemesis: Philip VI of France

Just a year after he took the throne, Edward received news that Charles IV, the last Capetian king of France, had died. France had gone through a turbulent decade and a half, in which the Capetian line rapidly shrank before extinguishing altogether. King Philip IV had died in 1314, the year of Edward II’s trumping at Bannockburn, and his surviving sons followed him in lightning succession: Louis IX succumbed to pneumonia in 1316, Philip V died of dysentery in 1322, and Charles IV, likely plagued by dysentery like his forebear, died in 1328. None of Philip IV’s sons had brought royal sons into the Capetian line, so it was unclear to whom the throne should pass. There were two main contenders: Philip Valois, a cousin of the late king, and Edward III of England, who was the grandson of the late Philip IV and nephew to Charles IV by way of his mother Isabella.  By proximity of blood, Edward was closest in the line of succession to the French throne; but because the French didn’t want an English king—their ultimate rival—lording over them, the French barons and the University of Paris invoked an old Frankish law declaring that the right to inherit the throne came from the paternal rather than maternal line, thus stripping Edward of any claim to the throne. Long after tensions ratcheted up, in 1340 the Avignon Papacy—the Popes who took their seat in the French city of Avignon—affirmed that the Frankish law regarding inheritance, put in the books around AD 500 by the first Frankish king, Clovis, were still binding. It was, of course, unsurprising that the Avignon papacy backed the French; but with papal support, the French claim that Edward was trying to illegally usurp the throne had serious backing. Edward, however, was undeterred.

Over a decade before the Frankish law was affirmed by the Avignon papacy, Edward backed down on his claims to the throne; in 1329, at age 17, he paid homage to Philip VI for his French fiefs in Aquitaine. The Duchy of Aquitaine had been in English hands since the marriage of Henry II to Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1152. The English viewed Aquitaine as if it were theirs in full sovereignty; the French saw it as an English fiefdom held in vassalage to the King of France. If the French were correct, then English kings were required to pledge loyalty to the King of France (do homage), which, of course, they weren’t keen to do. A number of English kings chafed against paying homage, and more than once the French had “confiscated” Aquitaine from its English overlords. Because the region of Gascony (in southwest France) was incorporated into Aquitaine (also known as “Guyenne”), this hotly-contested strip of territory was known, interchangeably, by any of those three names (Gascony, Aquitaine, or Guyenne). By the time Edward III took the throne in 1327, only part of Aquitaine—the Duchy of Gascony—remained in English hands; but Edward still called himself Duke of Aquitaine. He had ambitions not only to reclaim all of Aquitaine but also to take the French throne, but at the age of 17 he saw it prudent to give Philip VI homage—but he did so in a rebellious manner, hinting at the true condition of his heart: in no way was he ready to back down on his claims to both Aquitaine and France proper. When giving homage, vassals were to approach their lord unarmed and with their heads uncovered, but when the young Edward approached the French king, his head was covered with a crown and he had a sword strapped to his waist. He even went so far as to refuse to place his hands in those of Philip and to swear himself his “liege man.”

One of Edward’s most prolific advisors was Robert III of Artois, who was giving him secret information on the French courts and pressing him to launch a war against France (Robert Artois, a Frenchman, had sought exile in England after falling afoul of Philip IV, and he hoped to exact his vengeance through the English king). Edward had a number of grievances to go to war against France (some historians speculate that his claim to the throne was just a pretense over against more deep-seeded motivations): he knew that Philip VI had his eyes set on Gascony (Gascony’s trade in claret, a red wine, would boost Philip’s treasury), the merchants of Flanders had asked Edward to protect their trade, he wished to get even with France for forging the Auld Alliance with England’s nemesis France in 1295, and he wished to secure English hegemony over the English Channel. But in 1329 Edward knew it would be impudent to strike into the heart of France, as he would be opening himself up to retaliation via France’s ally Scotland. Thus, despite the fiery rhetoric and misgivings of Robert Artois, Edward settled in for the “long con”: though his ultimate aim was invading France for the reasons given above, he first had to knock Scotland out of the picture—and it looked like Scotland, thanks to the death of its Hero King Robert the Bruce, was ripe for the plucking.

Robert the Bruce had kept independent Scotland together, but at his death in 1329, a Scottish civil war was on the brink. His son and successor, David II, was just five years old, and the Guardians of the Kingdom—those Scottish magnates entrusted with governing Scotland in the young king’s minority—didn’t have Robert’s power to keep the disgruntled barons at bay. Discontent at home meshed with discontent abroad: the Treaty of Northampton had never been a selling point for the English. A great number of marcher lords along the Scottish border had been forced to cede much of their land to Scotland; calling themselves the Disinherited, they were unofficially led by Henry Beaumont. Beaumont sought out Edward Balliol, the disenfranchised son of the former Scottish king who had been put on the throne by Edward I. Balliol, who had been ousted by Robert the Bruce in the First Scottish War of Independence, had found exile in France, but at Beaumont’s request he crossed the Channel and took up shop in Yorkshire. He and Edward came to a secret “understanding,” wherein Edward gave his support to Balliol’s aims for his ancestral lands but insisted that Balliol, if he decided to invade a disrupted Scotland, do so from the sea rather than by land, so as not to violate the terms of Northampton. Balliol officially demanded his ancestral lands from David II, and when the minor king’s guardian unsurprisingly refused, Balliol began preparations for his invasion.

By the summer of 1332, he and Beaumont had put together a force that, according to the Bridlington Chronicle, numbered 500 men-at-arms and a thousand foot soldiers; the Lanercrost Chronicle, believed by most historians to be more accurate, put the number at its highest around 2800 soldiers (most of whom were archers armed with the longbow, now a staple in the English army). By mid-July Balliol had a fleet of 88 ships, and when news broke that David II’s guardian had died on July 20^th, Balliol knew the time to strike had come. He and Beaumont sailed on the last day of July and landed in the region of Fife in Scotland. They marched towards the Scottish city of Perth, and by 10 August they were just a few miles from Perth. They encamped south of the River Earn, but dire news reached them: they would have to postpone their march on the Scottish city, as two loyalist Scot armies were en route to intercept them. The Earl of Mar, the new leader of Scotland in David II’s name, led a significantly larger force and took position on the heights of Dupplin Moor, blocking the rebel advance on Perth. A second loyalist army, this one led by the Earl of Dunbar, was approaching them swiftly from the rear. When the Disinherited marching with Beaumont saw the size of Mar’s army before them, they accused Beaumont of treachery. He calmed their nerves and decided to risk a daring river crossing at night before launching a surprise attack on Mar; striking early would, he hoped, prevent Mar and Dunbar from linking up.

Mar, confident in his ability to squash the rebels, didn’t even post a watch. His army spent the evening drinking, and many fell into a drunken stupor. At midnight Sir Alexander Mowbray led a picked force across the river, stealthily climbed the slope of Dupplin Moor, and launched an attack on Mar’s forces. They made quick work of the troops before them, but by daybreak he discovered they weren’t troops at all—he’d cut into Mar’s baggage train. It didn’t matter in the end: Balliol and the Disinherited had safely crossed the river and had arrayed themselves in a good defensive position at the head of a narrow valley. Balliol ingeniously put his longbowmen—who comprised the bulk of his army—on the wings, and he had his knights and men-at-arms dismount in the center. His whole force was shaped like a crescent moon—and they awaited Mar’s attack.

The Battle of Dupplin Moor

Mar’s reputation had soured overnight. He’d been outflanked, and Lord Robert Bruce, an illegitimate son of the late king, accused the earl of incompetence. Mar, determined to regain his honor and show himself competent, vowed to show his worth by ordering a valiant and crushing assault on Balliol’s forces. Mar’s men vastly outnumbered those of the pretender to the throne, so victory was never in doubt. Lord Bruce, not wanting to be outdone by Mar, jostled to be the hero of the day, and so the two, with their guards in tow, raced to be the first to break through Balliol’s lines. But they failed to take into account the longbowmen, and their charge towards the dismounted men-at-arms was met with a hailstorm of arrows. The weak-armored Scots, in their unvisored helmets, lacked protection against the volleys and were cut down like wheat during the harvest. The longbowmen were so skilled that different segments fired volleys at different times, presenting an unending rain of steel that made the loyalists’ forces wither. Bruce’s forces, though winnowed by the arrow-storm, won the race into Balliol’s men-at-arms; but though the men-at-arms were forced back a few feet, they didn’t give way, and their steadfast determination to press the defense created a bottleneck for the charging loyalists. Bruce and Mar’s men struggled in face-to-face combat against Balliol’s warriors, but they couldn’t make so much as a dent. The rear ranks of the loyalist host pushed forward towards the front line to avoid the arrows cutting into them from above and from their flanks, and as the loyalists were packed together, panic ensued. As many were trampled underfoot as were cut down by arrows and swords; the chronicler John Capgrave tells us, “In this battle… more were slain by the Scots themselves than by the English. For rushing forward on each other, each crushed his neighbor, and for every one fallen there fell a second, and then a third fell, and those who were behind pressing forward and hastening to the fight, the whole army became a heap of the slain.” Loyalist bodies were piled so high that they were said to be the height of a spear. As the last of the loyalists pushed themselves into the melee, Balliol’s forces encircled the knot of Scots and thrust sword and spear into the massed soldiers. Slowly, minute by minute, the circle of the damned shortened until no one was left alive. The Earl of Mar and Lord Bruce were slain, and estimates of Scottish loyalists dead range from 2000 to 13,000; Balliol and Beaumont’s losses were confined to 33 men-at-arms. Those few loyalists who managed to escape were hunted down by Beaumont’s cavalry, and thus the Battle of Dupplin Moor went down as the worst Scottish defeat since the Battle of Falkirk 34 years earlier.

The annihilation of Mar’s army on 11^th August 1332 was a deathblow to Scottish loyalist morale. The Glory Days of Robert the Bruce had come to an end; under Robert Bruce, an aura of invincibility had settled over the Scottish like a blanket. Now that blanket had been stripped aside, and the loyalists were exposed to the cold reality of what lie in store. Historian Charles Oman, in his History of War in the Middle Ages, notes that “[the] Battle of Dupplin [Moor] forms a turning point in the history of the Scottish wars. For the future the English always adopted the order of battle which Balliol and Beaumont had discovered. It was the first in a long series of battles won by a combination of archers and dismounted men-at-arms.”

Beaumont had promised the Disinherited that they would be welcomed in Scotland, and after Mar’s defeat, that’s precisely what happened—those who hadn’t supported Robert the Bruce rallied to Balliol’s cause. The Earl of Dunbar, unnerved by the quick work done to Mar’s superior army, broke off his pursuit to fight another day. The eight-year-old David II was whisked away to France (though his supporters would continuing waging war in his name), and so the road to the throne was open for Balliol. He was crowned King of Scotland on 24 September 1332 and settled in Roxburgh. He pledged his loyalty to King Edward III, just as his father had done to Edward I, and then he moved to the city of Annan. It was there that his victory would be offset by defeat in the Battle of Annan.

His attacker, the loyalist Sir Archibald Douglas, had served under the Earl of Dunbar. In the wake of his victory against the new Scottish king, he was made Guardian of the Kingdom in the name of the dispossessed David II (after the death of Mar, Andrew Murray had been named Guardian, but he had been captured and imprisoned in England, leaving the guardianship open). Balliol was forced into the same fate as the minor king: he sought sanctuary outside Scotland, hurrying straight for Edward’s court. He received backing for a fresh landward invasion; Edward argued that because loyalist Scots had crossed into England while pursuing Balliol, they had violated the terms of Northampton and thus freed Edward to act. Balliol reentered Scotland and besieged the infamous port city of Berwick. His nemesis Douglas counterattacked but without effect: his forces were repulsed, and Berwick remained under siege. The city promised to surrender to Balliol’s forces unless they were relieved by July 20^th; thus Douglas had a small window of opportunity in which to rescue the beleaguered city. Unfortunately for him, this time he wouldn’t be facing Balliol alone: King Edward was en route with his own army. The three leaders—Edward and Balliol on one side and Douglas on the other—met at the infamous Battle of Halidon Hill, and Douglas was defeated.

The Battle of Halidon Hill

With the loyalist Scottish army in tatters, Balliol could settle down in Scotland as king once again. He was officially made “King of Scotland” in a February parliament in 1334, wherein he acknowledged “fealty and subjection to his English namesake, and surrendered Berwick as an inalienable possession of the English crown.” Berwick was just the first to be handed over to England: Roxburgh, Edinburgh, and Dumfries (among others) switched hands by the middle of summer 1334. English-held territory had lurched into southern Scotland, but though Edward established garrisons in these newly-gained territories, he didn’t incorporate them into the fold of English law. Balliol’s hold on Scotland against the loyalists had been secured at Halidon Hill, but now he had a new enemy to worry about: his allies. His supporters began bickering among themselves, even turning against him. He was still dealing with scattered loyalist holdouts as loyalist warships prowled the Scottish coast intent on waylaying English supply ships. Sir Andrew Murray, who had been released from prison in England, returned to Scotland to pick up where he left off. He rallied underground supporters of the exiled David II, but rather than attacking the head of Scotland’s new government, he went after its limbs, striking crippling blows against Balliol’s divided supporters. Balliol retreated to English-held Berwick, and many of his former supporters began defecting to the loyalists in droves. Murray became the poster-child for loyal Scottish resistance, and he called in French support according to the Auld Alliance forged in the previous century.

France and Scotland had been joined in the Auld Alliance since Edward Balliol’s father had signed a treaty with Philip IV against Edward I in 1295, pledging mutual defense. Now that alliance would be used against the late Balliol’s son. Murray, among other co-regents for the minor David II, requested assistance from Philip VI, and in November 1334 the French king informed Edward that he was sending an ambassador to England to hopefully resolve the Scottish succession crisis. The French ambassador, the Bishop of Avranches, asked Edward why he was acting against the legitimate Scottish king, David II, and his queen (who happened to be Edward’s sister Joan). Though Edward didn’t give clear answers, he did give the green light for forging a peace settlement—but the peace talks went nowhere, not because of Edward but because of David II’s supporters: they bickered among themselves when it came to Scotland’s finance and government. Their volatile disagreements gave Edward time to prepare for another invasion. A temporary truce had been emplaced to secure the peace talks, but the truce was about to expire. Murray learned of Edward’s machinations, and the loyalists shored up their defenses and ordered the evacuation of southern Scotland.

In July Edward, with 13,000 men, launched a three-pronged invasion of Scotland. He took the main bulk of the army north towards Clyde, where an English fleet waited; Balliol marched from Berwick. Their armies met up at Glasgow, and Philip VI, abiding by the terms of the Auld Alliance, threw together a force of 6000 professional soldiers not only to assist the ragtag Scottish loyalists but also to invade northern England. He gave Edward one last chance: submit the dispute of the Scottish succession to the arbitration of France and the Pope (who was decidedly pro-French) or feel the full wrath of France’s professional soldiers. Edward didn’t balk, for he was seeing success in Scotland: a number of loyalist commanders, disgusted with the internal turmoil of David II’s regency government, submitted to him. The most diehard loyalists entrenched themselves at Dumbarton Castle, led by the sole remaining regent, Andrew Murray.

Andrew Murray of Scotland

Murray and Edward called a truce to discuss terms. Edward wasn’t so much concerned with Balliol winning the throne as he was keeping the eight counties which Balliol had given him. In light of the truce, the Pope convinced Philip to delay dispatching his soldiers, and Murray and Edward came close to brokering a deal in which the middle-aged Balliol would be given the Scottish crown, but the young David II would be named as his heir. The Pope persuaded David II to reject the terms, though Murray had been ready to accept them. When the peace talks collapsed, Edward renewed his campaign with vigor, ordering the Earl of Lancaster to lead sorties against loyalist Scottish leaders. Edward turned his force on the Scottish port city of Aberdeen, which spies told him would be the disembarkation point for Philip’s soldiers. Upon reaching Aberdeen he burnt it to the ground. This didn’t keep the French from harassing the English: on 22 August 1336 four French privateers attacked the English town of Oxford, and a number of royal ships and merchantmen were captured while at anchor at the Isle of Wight. Edward didn’t receive word of these French raids until September, and he abandoned his Scottish campaign and hurried south. He came too late to do anything about the French privateers, so he returned to Scotland and began disassembling loyalist castles. Murray destroyed a number of castles in order to prevent the English king from using them, and famine and disease settled over the land. Edward returned to England in December and began putting together a force to garrison disputed Gascony next spring.

From the start Edward believed the real threat was France, and now Scotland began to slide from the limelight. As France ramped up her threats by harassing Gascony, prowling the Channel, and making lightning raids on English coastal towns, Edward felt the time to bring Philip to heel was at hand. He proposed that England raise two armies, one to deal with the Scots and the other to bolster Gascony’s garrison across the Channel. He organized a diplomatic delegation to meet with Philip, but in the spring of 1337 Philip refused to meet with Edward’s declaration and proclaimed the arriere-ban throughout France, calling men to arms. In May Philip met with the Great Council in Paris, and they agreed that Gascony should be reclaimed by the French monarchs on the premise that Edward was breaking his obligations as a vassal by sheltering the king’s “mortal enemy,” Robert Artois. Edward responded by bringing up the subject of Philip’s succession to the French throne, questioning the king’s right to succeed Charles IV, and in 1340—in a ballsy move that struck more than a cord in the embittered French king—proclaimed himself “King of France and the French Royal Arms.” Thus he brought his claim to the throne back front-and-center, but he was just warming up. France was neatly in his crosshairs, and the two would soon come to serious blows.

As early as 1336, when Edward’s attention began to shift from Scotland to France, the Scottish loyalists capitalized on his distraction. Murray, along with his compatriot William Douglas, made incursions against English-held strongholds. By the end of March 1337, the loyalists had reclaimed most of Scotland north of the Forth and were ravaging Balliol’s ancestral lands. France poured supplies into Scotland, and Scottish forces began making inroads into northern England, even laying waste to Cumberland. Edward tasked the Earl of Salisbury with keeping things together in the north, but he failed, and Edward had him withdrawn six months later. Murray, however, harmed his own cause: because of his ruthlessness, the early winter and spring of 1338 saw many Scottish civilians without food. Their support of him and David II began to wane, as they had never suffered such privations under Balliol. Murray died of illness in 1338, and William Douglas took up the banner and pressed the attack on the English. In spring 1339, Robert Stewart—the Guardian of the Kingdom—brought a huge force to bear against Balliol’s withering territories. English reinforcements were impeded by Scottish and French naval squadrons, and Stewart’s enemies surrendered in August. Balliol’s cause was all but finished.

As Balliol’s ambitions folded in Scotland, Edward sought continental allies for his upcoming war against France. In 1338, hoping to strengthen his alliances with the princes in the Low Countries, he left England, crossed the Channel, and sailed up the River Rhine. He met with the German Holy Roman Emperor, Ludwig, at Coblenz. All the imperial electors, minus the blind King John of Bohemia, were present, and Ludwig declared that Philip VI had forfeited his claim to the crown of France and proclaimed Edward as “imperial vicar” (a meaningless title). Edward had thus gained the support not only from Emperor Ludwig but also the support of a host of smaller German princes, who swore to assist him in his coming war with France. Though this alliance with the Holy Roman Empire looked good on paper, it would be fruitless on the field: the German promises weren’t kept. The princes made a sorry showing, and Ludwig never even made an appearance. Nevertheless, support from the Holy Roman Empire went a long way in procuring support elsewhere. In January 1340 he received support from the half-brother of the Count of Flanders, along with the civil authorities of Ghent, Ypres, and Bruges, who proclaimed Edward the rightful King of France. By that declaration he could sway possible supporters by convincing them they would be supporting the true King of France if they switched their allegiance from Philip.

France was gearing up for war as well.

The race was on to determine where the war would be fought:

“Would it be fought in the English or French countryside?”

The answer hinged on whoever first launched a successful invasion.

Edward began putting together an invasion fleet, and Philip did the same. The French king established a naval station at Rouen, agreements were made with Italian sea captains (especially the Genoese), and a new naval administration was cobbled together. Famous Italian sea captains—notably Doria, Grimaldi, and Fieschi—pledged their service to France. Between 1338 and 1339, French ships harried the English coast, destroying towns, sinking shipping, and slaughtering inhabitants. These were “softening-up” exercises geared at demoralizing the English people and weakening her defenses. Philip’s navy began to come together at a port called Sluys, and Edward, despite being outnumbered, decided to press his luck. The two navies would come to blows in the first bloody salvo of the Hundred Years’ War.