The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol. I., Part B.: From Henry III. to Richard III. — David Hume — John Shaqi
The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol. I., Part B.: From Henry III. to Richard III.
David Hume · en
Berwick was already taken by assault: Sir William Douglas, the governor,
was made prisoner: above seven thousand of the garrison were put to
the sword: and Edward, elated by this great advantage, despatched Earl
Warrenne with twelve thousand men to lay siege to Dunbar, which was
defended by the flower of the Scottish nobility.
The Scots, sensible of the importance of this place, which, if taken,
laid their whole country open to the enemy, advanced with their main
army, under the command of the earls of Buchan, Lenox, and Marre, in
order to relieve it. Warrenne, not dismayed at the great superiority
of their number, marched out to give them battle. He attacked them with
great vigor; and as undisciplined troops, when numerous, are but
the more exposed to a panic upon any alarm, he soon threw them into
confusion, and chased them off the field with great slaughter. The loss
of the Scots is said to have amounted to twenty thousand men: the Castle
of Dunbar, with all its garrison, surrendered next day to Edward, who,
after the battle, had brought up the main body of the English, and
who now proceeded with an assured confidence of success. The Castle of
Roxburgh was yielded by James, steward of Scotland; and that nobleman,
from whom is descended the royal family of Stuart, was again obliged
to swear fealty to Edward. After a feeble resistance, the Castles of
Edinburgh and Stirling opened their gates to the enemy. All the southern
parts were instantly subdued by the English; and to enable them the
better to reduce the northern, whose inaccessible situation seemed to
give them some more security, Edward sent for a strong reënforcement of
Welsh and Irish, who, being accustomed to a desultory kind of war, were
the best fitted to pursue the fugitive Scots into the recesses of their
lakes and mountains. But the spirit of the nation was already broken by
their misfortunes and the feeble and timid Baliol, discontented with his
own subjects, and overawed by the English, abandoned all those resources
which his people might yet have possessed in this extremity. He hastened
to make his submissions to Edward, he expressed the deepest penitence
for his disloyalty to his liege lord; and he made a solemn and
irrevocable resignation of his crown into the hands of that monarch.[*]
* Rymer, vol. ii. p. 718. Walsing. p. 67. Heming. vo. i p.
99 Trivet, p. 292.