The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol. I., Part B.: From Henry III. to Richard III.
David Hume · en
Baliol soon after made himself master of Perth; but still was not able
to bring over any of the Scots to his party. Patric Dunbar, earl of
Marche, and Sir Archibald Douglas, brother to the lord of that name,
appeared at the head of the Scottish armies, which amounted still to
near forty thousand men; and they purposed to reduce Baliol and the
English by famine. They blockaded Perth by land; they collected some
vessels with which they invested it by water; but Baliol’s ships,
attacking the Scottish fleet, gained a complete victory, and opened the
communication between Perth and the sea.[*] The Scotch armies were then
obliged to disband for want of pay and subsistence: the nation was in
effect subdued by a handful of men: each nobleman who found himself most
exposed to danger, successively submitted to Baliol: that prince was
crowned at Scone: David, his competitor, was sent over to France with
his betrothed wife Jane, sister to Edward: and the heads of his party
sued to Baliol for a truce, which he granted them, in order to assemble
a parliament in tranquillity, and have his title recognized by the whole
Scottish nation.
* Heming p. 273. Knyghton, p. 2561.
{1333.} But Baliol’s imprudence, or his necessities, making him dismiss
the greater part of his English followers, he was, notwithstanding the
truce, attacked of a sudden near Annan, by Sir Archibald Douglas and
other chieftains of that party; he was routed; his brother, John Baliol,
was slain; he himself was chased into England in a miserable condition;
and thus lost his kingdom by a revolution as sudden as that by which he
had acquired it.