The invasion of William the Lion, in 1174, was made ostensibly to aid the rebellious sons of Henry II. against their father. William’s true object was, no doubt, to recover the border counties. Perhaps no invasion of England has ever appeared so threatening, and proved so completely ‘the fleeting shadow of a dream.’ William’s army was large--perhaps the largest that a Scots king had hitherto gathered--but he could not control his wild followers. His advance was marked by ravage and destruction--peculiarly stupid in view of the fact that he hoped to annex the country which he was ruining. Several fortresses were captured, and in July he besieged Alnwick. He kept only a very small force about him, and allowed the main portion of his probably unruly host to spread over the country for purpose of pillage. The consequences of the dispersion were disastrous. The troops of the North had already assembled under Robert d’Estuteville, Sheriff of Yorkshire, and were marching against the invaders. A body of some four hundred horsemen was scouting ahead of the main body, and so hopelessly were the Scots scattered that they passed, apparently unchallenged, through the enemy’s line into his rear. Before the walls of Alnwick they saw a small body of about a hundred horsemen engaged in exercising and tilting. They can hardly have expected that they would be so rash as to charge their own superior numbers. Yet so it was. Practically the whole of the tilting band were taken, and the astonishment of the victors may be imagined when they found that they had captured the King of Scots. The Scottish army melted away across the Border. The King paid dearly for his recklessness. He was forced to become Henry’s vassal, and so remained until the death of the Angevin king. Richard I. very wisely freed him from this humiliation in return for a money payment, but there were no more Scottish invasions of England for many years. The Scottish kings never gave up their hopes of gaining Northumberland, and more than once hostilities appeared to threaten; but on the whole the relations between the two countries were peaceful, and when Alexander III. died in 1286 there had been no real outbreak of war for a century.