=8. Battle of Halidon Hill.=--In the spring of 1333, Edward the Third invested Berwick, and the governor agreed to give it up if it were not relieved by the Scots within a given time. The new Regent, _Archibald Douglas_, brother to the Good Lord James, marched to raise the siege. It was very much the case of Bannockburn reversed, for now the English had the advantage of being posted on _Halidon Hill_, close by the town, while the Scots, the assailants, had to struggle through a marsh. The English archers won the day; the Regent was killed; _Berwick_ was forced to yield; and _Balliol_ gave it over to the English, and placed all the strongholds south of the Forth in their hands. For three years longer there was much fighting on the Border with pretty equal success, until the French wars drew the attention of Edward the Third from Scotland, and then the national party began to get the upper hand. David, Earl of Athole, Balliol's chief supporter, was defeated and slain at Culbleen, in the Highlands; and when Robert the High Steward became Regent in 1338, he won back the strongholds. Soon after, Balliol left the kingdom, and in 1341 David and his Queen _Joan of England_ came home from France, where he had been sent to be out of the way of the troubles. Five years of comparative peace followed. A succession of truces were made with England, but they were not strictly kept on the Border. =9. Capture of the King.=--While Edward was busy with the siege of Calais, David, to keep up the spirit of the alliance with France, broke the truce between England and Scotland by invading England. He was defeated and captured by the Archbishop of York at the head of the force of the northern counties in 1346. The battle in which he was taken was called the battle of _Neville's Cross_, from a cross afterwards put up to mark the field by _Sir Ralph Neville_. For eleven years David remained a captive, and Scotland was governed by the former _Regent_, the _Steward_. During that time Berwick was won and lost again. Edward, to whom Balliol had handed over his claim to the kingdom for a pension of two thousand pounds, brought an English army as far as the Forth. As they could neither find provisions to sustain them nor an enemy to fight with, they were forced to return; but they had left such traces of their progress on churches and dwelling-houses that their inroad was remembered as the "burnt Candlemas." In 1347 David was released, the ransom being fixed at 100,000 marks. He made many after-visits to England, and proposed to the Estates, that _Lionel_, the second son of _Edward_, should succeed him, but to this they would not agree. He died in 1370, and left no children. After the death of Joan he had married Margaret Logie, a woman of obscure birth.