The Gold Rose: An Edward of Angoulême timeline
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Well, Richard is (now) a duke and still his brother's heir at this point in time. Also, I'm not sure there were any better options for Anne. I bought a biography of her back when I was considering her as a bride for Edward V, and between that and extensive research online, it seems that while Anne's name was mentioned in conjunction with several German dukes and margraves (and, very briefly, Charles VI of France shortly before Charles V's death), the only negotiations that were meaningfully pursued other than the English match was for Anne to wed Albrecht, the second son of Albrecht, count of Hainaut, Holland, and Zeeland -- the guy who arranged the famous double marriage between his and Philippe the Bold's kids. (Her proposed dowry for the Hainaut match was 10,000 pennies, which simply may not have been enough to fetch a husband of higher rank.)
I make no promises of the crusades success. But we'll be seeing (or least hearing about) several in the 1390s.
Hmmm, very interesting. And I suppose, if Anne of Burgundy could go to a third son in England, then Anne of Bohemia can go to a second son there. And as I said, on a personal level, this is a perfect match
Really enjoying this format. The links make it easy to look back and keep appraised of the whole picture.
Thanks. It took a while to get enough content up for things to actually start coming together the way that I imagined, but I think it works well now.
Thanks a lot for an update, it is excellent as always.
I have to admit I don't know many details of the OTL Second Guelders War. From what I can gather while several important details are different ITTL, the overall course of the war as well as its final result is quite close to what happened IOTL.
I have to admit I don't know many details of the OTL Second Guelders War. From what I can gather while several important details are different ITTL, the overall course of the war as well as its final result is quite close to what happened IOTL.
That's it on the nose, though the war will impact the decisions some of our main characters make a bit further down the line in ATL ...
Battle of Newcastle
Battle of Newcastle
The Battle of Newcastle was fought on 12 August 1388 between the kingdom of England and the kingdom of Scotland. It was the culmination of a major Scottish offensive that included attacks across both the eastern and western marches, as well as a naval campaign that ravaged Ulster and the Isle of Mann. The English were led in battle by Henry Percy, 1st earl of Northumberland, and the Scots led by James Douglas, 2nd earl of Douglas.
Background
King Robert II of Scotland was a cautious and conciliatory figure who dedicated his reign to securing his new Stewart dynasty. He had ascended the throne upon the death of his childless uncle, King David II, in 1371. Robert was 55 years old at the time, almost an old man by the standards of the day, and was hardly popular. David II's preferred heir was his other nephew, John of Sutherland, despite Sutherland being the son of David's younger sister when Robert was the son of David's older sister. Sutherland's death in an outbreak of the plague cleared Robert's path to the throne, but David's councilors still greeted Robert coolly when he rose to power.
One of Robert's first acts as king was to renew his uncle's truce with England. Not only did Robert need the time that this peace bought him to tighten his shaky grip on power, but he had few connections with the marcher lords who drove the war effort and a poor understanding of the complex web of competing land claims and local rivalries that had kept England and Scotland from negotiating a permanent peace. David's truce had included a payment schedule of 4,000 marks per annum to the English crown, money which went toward David's still-unresolved ransom after his capture in battle decades prior. Remarkably, Robert agreed to continue making these payments despite the fact that his uncle was dead. He stopped only after the death of King Edward III of England in 1377, by which time Robert was secure on the throne.
Robert had secured his kingship by establishing his sons as major regional powers and marrying family members into Scotland's most powerful families. By 1377, 11 of the kingdom's 14 earldoms were either held by one of Robert's sons, by a lord wed to one of his daughters or granddaughters, or by a Stewart cousin. The king's eldest son and heir, John Stewart, earl of Carrick, was the most prominent of these.
The earl of Carrick was the only one of Robert's sons with major territorial interests south of the Forth. He became an ally of the marcher lords, a constituency with which Robert had always struggled. This was a double-edged sword, though, as the powerful border lords were more loyal to Carrick personally than to the crown or the Stewart dynasty more generally. Carrick was made lieutenant of the marches in 1381, just as the long truce between England and Scotland was beginning to break down. The new lieutenant did little to rein in the violence and, in fact, encouraged border raids as part of a broader policy to expand Scotland's position on the marches back to the lines that had been established in 1328.
Carrick's belligerence toward the English put him at odds with his unwarlike father, but Carrick was an ambitious man who could not accept simply being the middle-aged heir to an elderly king. Robert, who had little influence over his southern lords at the best of times, lost control of them completely now. The king lost control of the north of his kingdom at the same time, as another of his sons, Alexander Stewart, earl of Buchan, terrorized the region to enrich himself. The situation came to a head in November 1384, as a coalition of northern and southern lords moved to make Carrick lieutenant of the realm, vesting in him all diplomatic and judicial power. It was effectively a coup, as Carrick was made king in all but name.
Carrick quickly moved Scotland toward open warfare with the English. He let the marcher lords off the leash, with devastating effects for northern England. Small towns and villages were burned and looted. Major positions were no better off. The English were not expecting war for more than half a year, which left the defenders of Berwick Castle unprepared for attack. The castle was taken before year's end. France and Scotland drew up plans for a joint invasion of England the following year.
King Edward V of England responded with overwhelming force. A 1385 English invasion of Scotland devastated Lothian, saw English raids north of the Forth for the first time in many decades, and ended with Edward's victory at the Battle of Arkinholm, at which Carrick was unhorsed, badly injured and taken prisoner.
The Scots looked to Robert II's second son, Robert Stewart, earl of Fife, for leadership after Carrick's capture, but Fife initially refused to take up the mantle of lieutenant. Carrick's lieutenancy had brought greater destruction to the realm than anything since the 1356 Burnt Candlemas campaign, the north of the kingdom was still lawless, the Franco-Scottish alliance had gone sour, and the ransom of the heir to the throne would likely be staggering. Fife refused to be made responsible for the unpopular decisions that would be required as a result of his brother's failures. Rather unexpectedly, the aged, unpopular Robert II made a comeback as a result.
Robert arranged for a new truce to take effect on 1 January 1386. The destruction to Lothian had been so severe that not even the hawkish marcher lords could object to a pause in hostilities. Negotiations for the earl of Carrick's release began in the spring. The English demanded 100,000 marks, plus the remaining 32,000 marks of David II's ransom, which Robert had committed to settling back in 1371. This was too much for the Scottish crown to bear, and so Robert argued that Carrick had fought at Arkinholm as a retainer of the French crown in an effort to put the financial burden on King Charles VI of France. This added new tensions to Franco-Scottish relations. Robert's truce with the English, initially negotiated for just six months, was extended for a full year and then again for a second year.
Prelude to war
On 26 October 1386, Edward V appointed his eldest surviving uncle, John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, lieutenant of Scotland. It was just one in a series of major administrative and military reforms that were announced in the Coronation Parliament. The wardens of marches, who had traditionally been the top officials on the border, were subordinated to the new lieutenancy, to which the king now delegated all diplomatic and military authority in the north.
The English adopted a new diplomatic strategy as Gaunt stepped into his new position. Edward, who took his claim to the overlordship of Scotland seriously, began to more publicly antagonize the Scots. The king referred to the Anglo-Scottish war as a "Stewart rebellion" against his authority and even mused that his cousin, Philippa of Coucy, had a greater claim to the Scottish throne than the Stewarts, via her descent from Ada Balliol. Gaunt, meanwhile, suggested that the English would be willing to drastically cut their financial demands for Carrick's ransom in exchange for the acknowledgement that the king of England was the king of Scots' overlord, and for Robert II and Carrick's fealty and homage to Edward. The good cop, bad cop routine rattled Scottish negotiators.
Henry Percy, 1st of Northumberland, struggled to adapt to this new power structure on the border. He was one of the greatest landholders in northern England and had established himself as the region's leading magnate through his family's near-constant control of one of the three marches. He was once one of Gaunt's allies, but resented that King Edward IV had dispatched Gaunt to Scotland to stop a local war between Northumberland and the earl of Dunbar in 1377. The following year, Northumberland forged a marriage alliance with another of Gaunt's rivals, Edmund Mortimer, 3rd earl of March, and had generally been a thorn in the duke's side through Gaunt's regency government of the late 1370s and early 1380s. Northumberland had no intention of burying the hatchet now.
John Neville, 1st earl of Cumberland, was Northumberland's main local rival and had become a favorite of the duke's during the regency era. Cumberland's brother was Alexander Neville, archbishop of York, who was an irritable and pugnacious character. The archbishop was a political outsider. He played no major role in the government of the realm and rarely even attended parliament. He focused entirely on his archiepiscopal see, with generally terrible results. He trod over the privileges of local religious houses, fought bitterly with the powerful bishop of Durham, and managed to spark a riot during a visit to Beverly. His victims now found a champion in Northumberland. The politically-isolated archbishop had no allies of his own, but for his brother, who struggled to defend him. Local powerbrokers began calling for Gaunt to remove Cumberland from the wardenship of the western march, as Cumberland became tainted by his association with his brother. Gaunt, loyal to a fault, would hear nothing of the sort. The duke's heated defense of the Nevilles earned him the ire of the bishop of Durham, a critical player in the marches.
The king of England was too busy elsewhere to shore up his uncle's political position. Edward toured the midlands through spring and summer 1387, launched a diplomatic mission to Navarre, and forged new alliances with Guelders and Luxembourg in preparation for a planned campaign in the Low Countries. With northern England gripped by political infighting and the country's military resources heading to the continent, the Scots saw an opportunity to both avenge Arkinholm and to end talk of English overlordship.
On 28 February 1388, the Scottish parliament met at Glasgow. It was the tenth time that a general council or parliament had been called since Carrick's capture less than two and a half years prior. The king, only a few days shy of turning 72, had done little since his return to power. Robert had not reined in his third son, the earl of Buchan, and had even rewarded Buchan with the justiciarship north of the Forth. The move had outraged the church, as bishops were frequently extorted by the earl. Robert's policies were not any more popular in the south, with the marcher lords demanding that he end negotiations to extend the truce for a third year. Robert's second son, the earl of Fife, was again called to act as lieutenant of the realm. This time, Fife accepted. He dispatched his son, Murdoch, to bring the earl of Buchan to heel and turned his own attention to the war with England. He imagined a far greater campaign than the one that his brother had launched in 1385, and one that did not require any help from the French.
Preparations for war
Scottish plans for the summer of 1388 were the most ambitious in decades, calling for a three-prong assault on England across both the eastern and western marches and on the lordship of Ireland. Each had its own objective. The attack across the eastern march was meant to be purely punitive, no different from other Scottish raiding campaigns except in scale. The campaign across the western march would besiege and occupy Carlisle, which would then become a base for further action in Cumberland. The raids on Ireland were intended to confuse the English and draw resources away from the north.
The occupation of Carlisle was the main strategic objective of the campaign. This marked a radical shift in the Scots' military thinking. Cross-border raids had been a favorite tactic of the Scots for many years, but while this method of warfare enriched the powerful marcher lords, it ultimately offered nothing that could be traded in talks with the English. Control of a major English stronghold, on the other hand, could give the Scots a chip to play in negotiations.
Talks between England and Scotland continued into the spring, even as the Scots prepared for war. Fife hoped that stringing along discussions about another extension of the truce would lull the English into a false sense of security. The Scots finally withdrew from negotiations in late April. The English picked up on the scale of the Scots' coming campaign six weeks later. Royal officials raced to react.
On 8 June, Gaunt issued commissions of array in Cumberland, Lancashire, Northumberland, Westmorland, and Yorkshire. The bishop of Durham, did the same in the county palatine. Gaunt beseeched the king for reinforcements from Cheshire, but it was already too late.
Invasion
On 29 June, Fife crossed the western march with George Dunbar, 10th earl of Dunbar, and 6,000 men at their backs. That same day, James Douglas, 2nd earl of Douglas, crossed the eastern march with John Dunbar, earl of Moray, and 3,000 men of their own. Unprecedented destruction was wrought by the campaign in the east. Hundreds were taken prisoner for ransom. Hundreds more were slaughtered in their homes. Crops were burned, churches were looted for their defiance of Avignon, cattle were rustled, and all moveable wealth was carted off. Meanwhile, at sea, Henry Sinclair, earl of Orkney and the admiral of Scotland, attacked Rathlin Island. The castle there was caught completely by surprise and fell quickly. Its capture was a point of pride for the Scots, as the castle had been a safe haven for King Robert I in 1306. From Rathlin, Sinclair launched a series of raids on Mann and Ulster.
As Douglas's eastern campaign terrorized the English, Fife's western campaign collapsed. The Scots' old habits were hard to break and they spent a month raiding the English countryside before finally pitching camp outside Carlisle on 3 August. Back in 1385, the French had noted that the town's defenses had fallen into disrepair during the ill-fated Franco-Scottish campaign that year. The English had made little effort to shore up their position in the three years since. Carlisle was weak, but its saving grace was that the Scots had no practical experience in siege warfare. Fife scattered the badly outnumbered local levies, but his effort was doomed without siegecraft or expert under-miners. Sir Archibald Douglas, a cousin of the earl of Douglas, grew frustrated and left the fruitless siege to join his cousin in the east. Half Fife's army followed, forcing the earl to call off the western prong of the campaign and return to Scotland.
The king of England had an army of 7,000 waiting to set sail for the continent in late July, as reports of the devastation in the north poured in. Edward pulled his captains together in a hastily-arranged war council to discuss the news. His youngest uncle, the duke of Gloucester, encouraged him to embark, believing that real war was with France. Sir Henry "Hotspur" Percy, who was the eldest son and heir to the earl of Northumberland, rejected this line of thought. Hotspur, who had fought at Edward's side at Arkinholm and was a captain in the army that had gathered for the planned Low Countries campaign, argued that the Scots would continue to fight, with or without French aid, until they were crushed. Edward agreed.
On 1 August, Edward canceled the English expedition to the Low Countries and issued a flurry of new orders to turn back the Scots. He put 4,000 of the men gathered at Dover under the command of his two half-brothers, the earls of Kent and Huntingdon, for the defense of the seas. Huntingdon sailed to the Irish Sea to relieve Mann and Ulster, while Kent patrolled the Channel for fear that there may be some French attack coming that the English had somehow missed. Edward led the remaining 3,000 north to confront the Scots. He sent word to his uncle, Gaunt, to meet him at York with whatever men he could muster.
News of the king's move north was not well received by Northumberland, who feared greater royal oversight of the marches and the decline of local powerhouses like the Percy family in dealings with Scotland. Northumberland had his own army at Newcastle and decided to confront the Scots himself, believing that victory over the earl of Douglas would prove that the marcher lords could manage the border without need for a royal lieutenant, thus returning the Percies to preeminence in the region.
Battle
The earl of Douglas had raided deep into England, crossing the Tyne and marching as far as Durham. He arranged his army in three broad lines of men-at-arms before the city walls in an ostentatious display of Scottish power before moving back north via the road to Newcastle, where at least 5,000 Englishmen were gathered under the command of the earl of Northumberland.
Douglas knew that Northumberland had assembled a sizable English force behind the walls of Newcastle, but Douglas wanted to return home as soon as possible and the road past the city was the shortest route back to Scotland. According to the French chronicler Jean Froissart, Douglas had heard tell that Edward was moving north and that the earl wanted to avoid a showdown with the victor of Arkinholm. The Scots stopped eight miles south of Newcastle on 11 August and waited for nightfall, hoping to slip past the earl of Northumberland under cover of darkness. Shortly before dusk, an English scouting party led by Robert Umfraville launched a surprise attack, stealing several horses and loosing dozens more to create turmoil in the Scottish camp. The Scots spent hours rounding up the frightened animals in the dark. The earl of Douglas allowed his men a few hours of rest before a pre-dawn march.
The Scots crossed the bridge over the Tyne just before daybreak on the morning of 12 August. The sun rose to reveal Northumberland's army arrayed in battle formation outside the walls of the city. The earl himself stood atop the mighty West Gate in full armor, an ax in one hand and his banner in the other. Douglas and his men had been caught. He ordered his men to form lines.
The two armies were of similar size, with Douglas's forces having swollen to nearly 6,000 men after his cousin, Sir Archibald Douglas, led about half the earl of Fife's army away from the Siege of Carlisle. The English army drew from the Percy family's large network of northern retainers, but was also composed in no small part of the levies of Northumberland and Yorkshire. The men enlisted from the counties had poor arms and training. The Scottish army, on the other hand, was drawn almost entirely from the elite. Heavy arms, fine armor, and experience in war could have given the Scots a serious advantage had their men not been exhausted after a chaotic night with little sleep.
The English were split into two divisions. Sir Thomas Percy, Northumberland's brother, led the first. Percy ordered a tightly-packed unit of longbowmen forward and volleys of arrows began to rain down upon the Scots. It was instant carnage, as the missiles ripped through those who could not afford the finest plate armor. The Scottish knight Sir John Swinton led 100 men-at-arms in a desperate charge to disperse the archers, but the arrows were only deadlier at a closer range and Swinton's unit was slaughtered before it even reached the English.
Swinton's suicidal cavalry attack gave the remaining Scots time to form rectilinear schiltrons. This took an extraordinary level of discipline, demonstrating the high quality of the Scots on the field that day. A direct assault was ordered. Screams rang out as English arrows poured down, but the Scots would not relent. Sir David Lindsay, who led the Scottish right flank, broke through the hail of arrows and finally met the English infantry. The fighting was fierce, but the fresh English men-at-arms had a clear advantage over the badly battered Scots. The English shouted "Percy!" and "Saint George!" as the Scots shrank back in the opening exchanges of spear and sword. Northumberland, seeing the Scots fading early, ordered Sir Mathew Redmayne to take a small mounted force on a circuitous route and cut off any possible retreat.
The earl of Douglas had no intention of retreating. The leading light of the Scottish nobility, he personally led the reserve force of dismounted cavalry into the thick of the fighting. Cries of "Douglas!" rang out as the earl struck down three English knights and rallied the Scots for a counterattack. The Scottish lines quickly reformed, showing the clear advantage that the Scots had in fielding an entirely professional force. The English line began to buckle as the Scots pushed forward. The enlisted men of the English army began to break. The earl of Northumberland rushed in to fill the gap that was emerging in the line. The fiercest fighting followed, with both earls being on the front lines. Northumberland took a blade in his left armpit, a weak point in plate armor. He fought on even as he began to bleed out. Events ground into a bloody stalemate until Redmayne, who had been sent to cut off a possible Scottish retreat, returned to attack the Scots in the rear. The confused and exhausted Scots were finally overwhelmed.
The Scottish retreat was chaotic. Redmayne's force was small, but their mounts gave them a powerful advantage over the Scots, who were hundreds of yards from their own horses and easy pickings for the English horsemen. The earl of Moray fought his way out, but the earl of Douglas, his cousin Sir Archibald, and Sir David Lindsay, one of Robert II's sons-in-law, were all taken prisoner. More than 1,200 Scots lay dead on the field and at least 700 more surrendered to the English. Eighty of the prisoners hailed from Scotland's leading families on the marches.
The Scots suffered further losses as they fled north. The English had reinforced Alnwick and Redesdale over the summer and were able to pick off hundreds of retreating Scots from these positions. Between Newcastle, Alnwick, and Redesdale, the Scots lost more than 2,500 of their finest fighting men to the English. Contemporary reports said that the English lost between 200 and 300 men, though this would not have included the likely large number of enlisted men who fell at Newcastle. By far, the most notable English casualty was the earl of Northumberland, who died shortly after the battle as a result of his wounds.
Counter-invasion
Edward V reached Newcastle on 18 August. He welcomed news of the English victory and recognized his friend and brother-in-arms, Sir Henry "Hotspur" Percy, as the 2nd earl of Northumberland. He wasted no time mourning the 1st earl's death, though. Edward had come from Dover with about 3,000 men and it was his intention to punish the Scots for their devastation of the north. His uncle, Gaunt, had at least 5,000 men waiting for him, drawn from the Lancastrian network of retainers and levies of Cumberland, Durham, Lancashire, and Westmorland. Perhaps another 2,000 were added from the men that the late earl of Northumberland had gathered in the area. So it was with probably around 10,000 men at his back that Edward launched a retaliatory campaign into Scotland. He targeted the now-defenseless lands of the earl of Dunbar in Roxburgh before visiting fresh destruction upon Lothian. Unlike his last campaign, the Scots were unprepared for an English invasion in 1388 and Edward's men grew rich pillaging the countryside, rustling cattle, and looting the wine cellars of Avignon-obedient abbeys.
Edward's wrath did not stop with his devastation of southeastern Scotland. Once it was clear that there was no threat from France, Edward ordered his half-brother, the earl of Kent, to bring the might of the English navy to bear against Scotland. Kent wreaked havoc along the eastern coastline. Aberdeen suffered one of the worst attacks, as the city was burned, the surrounding area was pillaged, and the ships in its harbor, mostly stocked with barrels of salted fish, were stolen. The Orkney Islands received special attention from Kent in retaliation for the earl of Orkney's attack on Ireland in the summer. Orkney himself was killed in a naval battle against the earl of Huntingdon at Strangford Lough, ending Orkney's long career as admiral of Scotland.
Aftermath
The Battle of Newcastle was the greatest disaster for the Scots since the Battle of Neville's Cross nearly a half-century prior. Contemporary English writers had declared Edward V's victory at Arkinholm in 1385 a triumph, but while the capture of the heir to the Scottish throne was a major feat, the casualties of that battle were relatively low and had fallen most heavily on the French, and Scotland's ability to make war had not been much affected. Newcastle, on the other hand, gutted the southern Scottish nobility and left the country in a precarious position militarily, as Edward's counter-invasion demonstrated.
The consequences of Newcastle did not stop with England's domination of Scotland on land and sea. The gutting of Scotland's southern nobility not only hollowed out the kingdom's defenses, but also left the earl of Carrick's political network in tatters. The triple marriage alliance between the Stewarts, the Douglases, and the Drummonds—three of the most influential families in southern Scotland—had provided Carrick a good base of support against his powerful and often troublesome younger brothers, particularly the earl of Fife. Now, there was nothing to hold Fife's ambitions in check.
In late 1388 and 1389, Fife started installing his own allies into lordships once held by the Douglases. Fife claimed these men were only caretakers sent to guard the border from English attack, but Carrick's wife, Anabella Drummond, his sister, Isabel Stewart, who was Douglas's wife, and Isabel Douglas, who was Douglas's sister and Anabella's sister-in-law, suspected that Fife had plans to disinherit and dispossess their husbands. These three women formed the basis of a pro-Carrick, anti-Fife faction, but Fife's control of the lieutenancy, which was reconfirmed at a general council in December, and the simple fact that so many Carrick, Douglas and Drummond men were either dead or imprisoned in England, put Fife in the catbird seat.
The English consolidated their position as the Scots divided against themselves. Edward V purchased the rights to ransom all the men captured in the battle and then refused to negotiate the release of his new prisoners until the matter of Carrick's ransom, and by extension the whole Anglo-Scottish war, was resolved. This meant that the Scottish march was effectively leaderless and critically undermanned, leaving Scotland dangerously exposed to further English incursions. It looked as though the English would be able to dictate terms in future negotiations with the Scots, but events on the continent soon brought them back to reality. The duke of Brittany betrayed England once again and made peace with France, the king of Bohemia proved to be a worthless ally, the duke of Guelders was quickly becoming more interested in crusade than continuing the war in the Low Countries, and the king of Naples died in Provence. In short, England had seen setbacks everywhere but Scotland. Edward's priority now became making peace with Scotland, and doing so quickly, so that he could turn his attention to the continent. His other priority was to strengthen England's position in Ireland following Scotland's raids on the island, and so installed his younger brother, Richard of Bordeaux, duke of Clarence, as lord lieutenant.
On 20 January 1389, the English and Scots met in the first of a series of conferences at Melrose Abbey. It was mostly a ruin, having been destroyed in Edward's 1385 campaign, but had undergone some repairs. Its greatest advantage was its position, sitting between Roxburgh Castle, which the English controlled, and the lands of Roxburghshire that the Scots had reconquered in the late 1370s and 1380s. It thus allowed both the English and Scots to claim that they were negotiating on their own territory. The two sides picked up where they had left off a year prior, with England making huge financial demands and also offering to drastically cut these demands in exchange for Scotland's subordination to the English crown. Meetings went almost continuously through the spring, as messages flew back and forth to Holyrood and Westminster. A deal was struck on 25 June.
On 2 August, the aged Robert II made a rare appearance on the Scottish marches to attend a ceremonial signing of a new peace. His second son and lieutenant, Fife, was there too. Edward V did not attend and instead sent his uncle, Gaunt, to represent him. The treaty that they sealed was not a permanent peace, as Edward had hoped, but a 20-year truce and financial settlement. Robert was forced to acknowledge that he had reneged on his 1371 agreement to settle the late David II's debts, which still stood at 32,000 marks (£21,333) in 1389. On top of this, Carrick's ransom was set at 60,000 marks (£40,000). The heir to the Scottish throne was to remain a prisoner until two-thirds of his ransom was paid, but payments to the English crown would not count Carrick's ransom until David's debts had been settled. The Scots agreed to pay 10,000 marks per annum for two years and to 4,000 marks per annum thereafter. A schedule for "march days" was set to hear cases of cross-border disputes and England was to keep its positions in southern Scotland until Scotland's financial obligations were met in full. The greater issue of Scottish sovereignty was kicked down the road.
The Treaty of Melrose was a victory for both sides. The long truce secured England's northern border and promised to bring a fortune to the English crown just as it was moving the war with France back onto the continent. Indeed, Gaunt's son, Henry of Bolingbroke, earl of Derby, was already leading an army and marching into England and France's greatest showdown in more than three decades. At the same time, while the treaty inflicted major financial pain on the Scots, they had held onto their independence for the foreseeable future.
The biggest winner at Melrose was neither Edward, who now had the freedom to make war on France, nor Robert, who had almost always preferred peace to war with England. It was Robert's second son, Fife. The payment schedule to which the Scots had agreed would keep Carrick in England for 15 more years and Fife, who was already secure in the lieutenancy, could only expect his influence to grow once their father, who was 73, inevitably passed away. Fife's only opposition was the faction led by Anabella, but her Douglas allies were themselves English prisoners, and they still had to negotiate and raise the funds for their own releases. Anabella would begin building up her and Carrick's sons as figureheads against Fife's rule in the 1390s, which would ultimately lead to the Stewart Civil War.
The Battle of Newcastle was fought on 12 August 1388 between the kingdom of England and the kingdom of Scotland. It was the culmination of a major Scottish offensive that included attacks across both the eastern and western marches, as well as a naval campaign that ravaged Ulster and the Isle of Mann. The English were led in battle by Henry Percy, 1st earl of Northumberland, and the Scots led by James Douglas, 2nd earl of Douglas.
Background
King Robert II of Scotland was a cautious and conciliatory figure who dedicated his reign to securing his new Stewart dynasty. He had ascended the throne upon the death of his childless uncle, King David II, in 1371. Robert was 55 years old at the time, almost an old man by the standards of the day, and was hardly popular. David II's preferred heir was his other nephew, John of Sutherland, despite Sutherland being the son of David's younger sister when Robert was the son of David's older sister. Sutherland's death in an outbreak of the plague cleared Robert's path to the throne, but David's councilors still greeted Robert coolly when he rose to power.
One of Robert's first acts as king was to renew his uncle's truce with England. Not only did Robert need the time that this peace bought him to tighten his shaky grip on power, but he had few connections with the marcher lords who drove the war effort and a poor understanding of the complex web of competing land claims and local rivalries that had kept England and Scotland from negotiating a permanent peace. David's truce had included a payment schedule of 4,000 marks per annum to the English crown, money which went toward David's still-unresolved ransom after his capture in battle decades prior. Remarkably, Robert agreed to continue making these payments despite the fact that his uncle was dead. He stopped only after the death of King Edward III of England in 1377, by which time Robert was secure on the throne.
Robert had secured his kingship by establishing his sons as major regional powers and marrying family members into Scotland's most powerful families. By 1377, 11 of the kingdom's 14 earldoms were either held by one of Robert's sons, by a lord wed to one of his daughters or granddaughters, or by a Stewart cousin. The king's eldest son and heir, John Stewart, earl of Carrick, was the most prominent of these.
The earl of Carrick was the only one of Robert's sons with major territorial interests south of the Forth. He became an ally of the marcher lords, a constituency with which Robert had always struggled. This was a double-edged sword, though, as the powerful border lords were more loyal to Carrick personally than to the crown or the Stewart dynasty more generally. Carrick was made lieutenant of the marches in 1381, just as the long truce between England and Scotland was beginning to break down. The new lieutenant did little to rein in the violence and, in fact, encouraged border raids as part of a broader policy to expand Scotland's position on the marches back to the lines that had been established in 1328.
Carrick's belligerence toward the English put him at odds with his unwarlike father, but Carrick was an ambitious man who could not accept simply being the middle-aged heir to an elderly king. Robert, who had little influence over his southern lords at the best of times, lost control of them completely now. The king lost control of the north of his kingdom at the same time, as another of his sons, Alexander Stewart, earl of Buchan, terrorized the region to enrich himself. The situation came to a head in November 1384, as a coalition of northern and southern lords moved to make Carrick lieutenant of the realm, vesting in him all diplomatic and judicial power. It was effectively a coup, as Carrick was made king in all but name.
Carrick quickly moved Scotland toward open warfare with the English. He let the marcher lords off the leash, with devastating effects for northern England. Small towns and villages were burned and looted. Major positions were no better off. The English were not expecting war for more than half a year, which left the defenders of Berwick Castle unprepared for attack. The castle was taken before year's end. France and Scotland drew up plans for a joint invasion of England the following year.
King Edward V of England responded with overwhelming force. A 1385 English invasion of Scotland devastated Lothian, saw English raids north of the Forth for the first time in many decades, and ended with Edward's victory at the Battle of Arkinholm, at which Carrick was unhorsed, badly injured and taken prisoner.
The Scots looked to Robert II's second son, Robert Stewart, earl of Fife, for leadership after Carrick's capture, but Fife initially refused to take up the mantle of lieutenant. Carrick's lieutenancy had brought greater destruction to the realm than anything since the 1356 Burnt Candlemas campaign, the north of the kingdom was still lawless, the Franco-Scottish alliance had gone sour, and the ransom of the heir to the throne would likely be staggering. Fife refused to be made responsible for the unpopular decisions that would be required as a result of his brother's failures. Rather unexpectedly, the aged, unpopular Robert II made a comeback as a result.
Robert arranged for a new truce to take effect on 1 January 1386. The destruction to Lothian had been so severe that not even the hawkish marcher lords could object to a pause in hostilities. Negotiations for the earl of Carrick's release began in the spring. The English demanded 100,000 marks, plus the remaining 32,000 marks of David II's ransom, which Robert had committed to settling back in 1371. This was too much for the Scottish crown to bear, and so Robert argued that Carrick had fought at Arkinholm as a retainer of the French crown in an effort to put the financial burden on King Charles VI of France. This added new tensions to Franco-Scottish relations. Robert's truce with the English, initially negotiated for just six months, was extended for a full year and then again for a second year.
Prelude to war
On 26 October 1386, Edward V appointed his eldest surviving uncle, John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, lieutenant of Scotland. It was just one in a series of major administrative and military reforms that were announced in the Coronation Parliament. The wardens of marches, who had traditionally been the top officials on the border, were subordinated to the new lieutenancy, to which the king now delegated all diplomatic and military authority in the north.
The English adopted a new diplomatic strategy as Gaunt stepped into his new position. Edward, who took his claim to the overlordship of Scotland seriously, began to more publicly antagonize the Scots. The king referred to the Anglo-Scottish war as a "Stewart rebellion" against his authority and even mused that his cousin, Philippa of Coucy, had a greater claim to the Scottish throne than the Stewarts, via her descent from Ada Balliol. Gaunt, meanwhile, suggested that the English would be willing to drastically cut their financial demands for Carrick's ransom in exchange for the acknowledgement that the king of England was the king of Scots' overlord, and for Robert II and Carrick's fealty and homage to Edward. The good cop, bad cop routine rattled Scottish negotiators.
Henry Percy, 1st of Northumberland, struggled to adapt to this new power structure on the border. He was one of the greatest landholders in northern England and had established himself as the region's leading magnate through his family's near-constant control of one of the three marches. He was once one of Gaunt's allies, but resented that King Edward IV had dispatched Gaunt to Scotland to stop a local war between Northumberland and the earl of Dunbar in 1377. The following year, Northumberland forged a marriage alliance with another of Gaunt's rivals, Edmund Mortimer, 3rd earl of March, and had generally been a thorn in the duke's side through Gaunt's regency government of the late 1370s and early 1380s. Northumberland had no intention of burying the hatchet now.
John Neville, 1st earl of Cumberland, was Northumberland's main local rival and had become a favorite of the duke's during the regency era. Cumberland's brother was Alexander Neville, archbishop of York, who was an irritable and pugnacious character. The archbishop was a political outsider. He played no major role in the government of the realm and rarely even attended parliament. He focused entirely on his archiepiscopal see, with generally terrible results. He trod over the privileges of local religious houses, fought bitterly with the powerful bishop of Durham, and managed to spark a riot during a visit to Beverly. His victims now found a champion in Northumberland. The politically-isolated archbishop had no allies of his own, but for his brother, who struggled to defend him. Local powerbrokers began calling for Gaunt to remove Cumberland from the wardenship of the western march, as Cumberland became tainted by his association with his brother. Gaunt, loyal to a fault, would hear nothing of the sort. The duke's heated defense of the Nevilles earned him the ire of the bishop of Durham, a critical player in the marches.
The king of England was too busy elsewhere to shore up his uncle's political position. Edward toured the midlands through spring and summer 1387, launched a diplomatic mission to Navarre, and forged new alliances with Guelders and Luxembourg in preparation for a planned campaign in the Low Countries. With northern England gripped by political infighting and the country's military resources heading to the continent, the Scots saw an opportunity to both avenge Arkinholm and to end talk of English overlordship.
On 28 February 1388, the Scottish parliament met at Glasgow. It was the tenth time that a general council or parliament had been called since Carrick's capture less than two and a half years prior. The king, only a few days shy of turning 72, had done little since his return to power. Robert had not reined in his third son, the earl of Buchan, and had even rewarded Buchan with the justiciarship north of the Forth. The move had outraged the church, as bishops were frequently extorted by the earl. Robert's policies were not any more popular in the south, with the marcher lords demanding that he end negotiations to extend the truce for a third year. Robert's second son, the earl of Fife, was again called to act as lieutenant of the realm. This time, Fife accepted. He dispatched his son, Murdoch, to bring the earl of Buchan to heel and turned his own attention to the war with England. He imagined a far greater campaign than the one that his brother had launched in 1385, and one that did not require any help from the French.
Preparations for war
Scottish plans for the summer of 1388 were the most ambitious in decades, calling for a three-prong assault on England across both the eastern and western marches and on the lordship of Ireland. Each had its own objective. The attack across the eastern march was meant to be purely punitive, no different from other Scottish raiding campaigns except in scale. The campaign across the western march would besiege and occupy Carlisle, which would then become a base for further action in Cumberland. The raids on Ireland were intended to confuse the English and draw resources away from the north.
The occupation of Carlisle was the main strategic objective of the campaign. This marked a radical shift in the Scots' military thinking. Cross-border raids had been a favorite tactic of the Scots for many years, but while this method of warfare enriched the powerful marcher lords, it ultimately offered nothing that could be traded in talks with the English. Control of a major English stronghold, on the other hand, could give the Scots a chip to play in negotiations.
Talks between England and Scotland continued into the spring, even as the Scots prepared for war. Fife hoped that stringing along discussions about another extension of the truce would lull the English into a false sense of security. The Scots finally withdrew from negotiations in late April. The English picked up on the scale of the Scots' coming campaign six weeks later. Royal officials raced to react.
On 8 June, Gaunt issued commissions of array in Cumberland, Lancashire, Northumberland, Westmorland, and Yorkshire. The bishop of Durham, did the same in the county palatine. Gaunt beseeched the king for reinforcements from Cheshire, but it was already too late.
Invasion
On 29 June, Fife crossed the western march with George Dunbar, 10th earl of Dunbar, and 6,000 men at their backs. That same day, James Douglas, 2nd earl of Douglas, crossed the eastern march with John Dunbar, earl of Moray, and 3,000 men of their own. Unprecedented destruction was wrought by the campaign in the east. Hundreds were taken prisoner for ransom. Hundreds more were slaughtered in their homes. Crops were burned, churches were looted for their defiance of Avignon, cattle were rustled, and all moveable wealth was carted off. Meanwhile, at sea, Henry Sinclair, earl of Orkney and the admiral of Scotland, attacked Rathlin Island. The castle there was caught completely by surprise and fell quickly. Its capture was a point of pride for the Scots, as the castle had been a safe haven for King Robert I in 1306. From Rathlin, Sinclair launched a series of raids on Mann and Ulster.
As Douglas's eastern campaign terrorized the English, Fife's western campaign collapsed. The Scots' old habits were hard to break and they spent a month raiding the English countryside before finally pitching camp outside Carlisle on 3 August. Back in 1385, the French had noted that the town's defenses had fallen into disrepair during the ill-fated Franco-Scottish campaign that year. The English had made little effort to shore up their position in the three years since. Carlisle was weak, but its saving grace was that the Scots had no practical experience in siege warfare. Fife scattered the badly outnumbered local levies, but his effort was doomed without siegecraft or expert under-miners. Sir Archibald Douglas, a cousin of the earl of Douglas, grew frustrated and left the fruitless siege to join his cousin in the east. Half Fife's army followed, forcing the earl to call off the western prong of the campaign and return to Scotland.
The king of England had an army of 7,000 waiting to set sail for the continent in late July, as reports of the devastation in the north poured in. Edward pulled his captains together in a hastily-arranged war council to discuss the news. His youngest uncle, the duke of Gloucester, encouraged him to embark, believing that real war was with France. Sir Henry "Hotspur" Percy, who was the eldest son and heir to the earl of Northumberland, rejected this line of thought. Hotspur, who had fought at Edward's side at Arkinholm and was a captain in the army that had gathered for the planned Low Countries campaign, argued that the Scots would continue to fight, with or without French aid, until they were crushed. Edward agreed.
On 1 August, Edward canceled the English expedition to the Low Countries and issued a flurry of new orders to turn back the Scots. He put 4,000 of the men gathered at Dover under the command of his two half-brothers, the earls of Kent and Huntingdon, for the defense of the seas. Huntingdon sailed to the Irish Sea to relieve Mann and Ulster, while Kent patrolled the Channel for fear that there may be some French attack coming that the English had somehow missed. Edward led the remaining 3,000 north to confront the Scots. He sent word to his uncle, Gaunt, to meet him at York with whatever men he could muster.
News of the king's move north was not well received by Northumberland, who feared greater royal oversight of the marches and the decline of local powerhouses like the Percy family in dealings with Scotland. Northumberland had his own army at Newcastle and decided to confront the Scots himself, believing that victory over the earl of Douglas would prove that the marcher lords could manage the border without need for a royal lieutenant, thus returning the Percies to preeminence in the region.
Battle
The earl of Douglas had raided deep into England, crossing the Tyne and marching as far as Durham. He arranged his army in three broad lines of men-at-arms before the city walls in an ostentatious display of Scottish power before moving back north via the road to Newcastle, where at least 5,000 Englishmen were gathered under the command of the earl of Northumberland.
Douglas knew that Northumberland had assembled a sizable English force behind the walls of Newcastle, but Douglas wanted to return home as soon as possible and the road past the city was the shortest route back to Scotland. According to the French chronicler Jean Froissart, Douglas had heard tell that Edward was moving north and that the earl wanted to avoid a showdown with the victor of Arkinholm. The Scots stopped eight miles south of Newcastle on 11 August and waited for nightfall, hoping to slip past the earl of Northumberland under cover of darkness. Shortly before dusk, an English scouting party led by Robert Umfraville launched a surprise attack, stealing several horses and loosing dozens more to create turmoil in the Scottish camp. The Scots spent hours rounding up the frightened animals in the dark. The earl of Douglas allowed his men a few hours of rest before a pre-dawn march.
The Scots crossed the bridge over the Tyne just before daybreak on the morning of 12 August. The sun rose to reveal Northumberland's army arrayed in battle formation outside the walls of the city. The earl himself stood atop the mighty West Gate in full armor, an ax in one hand and his banner in the other. Douglas and his men had been caught. He ordered his men to form lines.
The two armies were of similar size, with Douglas's forces having swollen to nearly 6,000 men after his cousin, Sir Archibald Douglas, led about half the earl of Fife's army away from the Siege of Carlisle. The English army drew from the Percy family's large network of northern retainers, but was also composed in no small part of the levies of Northumberland and Yorkshire. The men enlisted from the counties had poor arms and training. The Scottish army, on the other hand, was drawn almost entirely from the elite. Heavy arms, fine armor, and experience in war could have given the Scots a serious advantage had their men not been exhausted after a chaotic night with little sleep.
The English were split into two divisions. Sir Thomas Percy, Northumberland's brother, led the first. Percy ordered a tightly-packed unit of longbowmen forward and volleys of arrows began to rain down upon the Scots. It was instant carnage, as the missiles ripped through those who could not afford the finest plate armor. The Scottish knight Sir John Swinton led 100 men-at-arms in a desperate charge to disperse the archers, but the arrows were only deadlier at a closer range and Swinton's unit was slaughtered before it even reached the English.
Swinton's suicidal cavalry attack gave the remaining Scots time to form rectilinear schiltrons. This took an extraordinary level of discipline, demonstrating the high quality of the Scots on the field that day. A direct assault was ordered. Screams rang out as English arrows poured down, but the Scots would not relent. Sir David Lindsay, who led the Scottish right flank, broke through the hail of arrows and finally met the English infantry. The fighting was fierce, but the fresh English men-at-arms had a clear advantage over the badly battered Scots. The English shouted "Percy!" and "Saint George!" as the Scots shrank back in the opening exchanges of spear and sword. Northumberland, seeing the Scots fading early, ordered Sir Mathew Redmayne to take a small mounted force on a circuitous route and cut off any possible retreat.
The earl of Douglas had no intention of retreating. The leading light of the Scottish nobility, he personally led the reserve force of dismounted cavalry into the thick of the fighting. Cries of "Douglas!" rang out as the earl struck down three English knights and rallied the Scots for a counterattack. The Scottish lines quickly reformed, showing the clear advantage that the Scots had in fielding an entirely professional force. The English line began to buckle as the Scots pushed forward. The enlisted men of the English army began to break. The earl of Northumberland rushed in to fill the gap that was emerging in the line. The fiercest fighting followed, with both earls being on the front lines. Northumberland took a blade in his left armpit, a weak point in plate armor. He fought on even as he began to bleed out. Events ground into a bloody stalemate until Redmayne, who had been sent to cut off a possible Scottish retreat, returned to attack the Scots in the rear. The confused and exhausted Scots were finally overwhelmed.
The Scottish retreat was chaotic. Redmayne's force was small, but their mounts gave them a powerful advantage over the Scots, who were hundreds of yards from their own horses and easy pickings for the English horsemen. The earl of Moray fought his way out, but the earl of Douglas, his cousin Sir Archibald, and Sir David Lindsay, one of Robert II's sons-in-law, were all taken prisoner. More than 1,200 Scots lay dead on the field and at least 700 more surrendered to the English. Eighty of the prisoners hailed from Scotland's leading families on the marches.
The Scots suffered further losses as they fled north. The English had reinforced Alnwick and Redesdale over the summer and were able to pick off hundreds of retreating Scots from these positions. Between Newcastle, Alnwick, and Redesdale, the Scots lost more than 2,500 of their finest fighting men to the English. Contemporary reports said that the English lost between 200 and 300 men, though this would not have included the likely large number of enlisted men who fell at Newcastle. By far, the most notable English casualty was the earl of Northumberland, who died shortly after the battle as a result of his wounds.
Counter-invasion
Edward V reached Newcastle on 18 August. He welcomed news of the English victory and recognized his friend and brother-in-arms, Sir Henry "Hotspur" Percy, as the 2nd earl of Northumberland. He wasted no time mourning the 1st earl's death, though. Edward had come from Dover with about 3,000 men and it was his intention to punish the Scots for their devastation of the north. His uncle, Gaunt, had at least 5,000 men waiting for him, drawn from the Lancastrian network of retainers and levies of Cumberland, Durham, Lancashire, and Westmorland. Perhaps another 2,000 were added from the men that the late earl of Northumberland had gathered in the area. So it was with probably around 10,000 men at his back that Edward launched a retaliatory campaign into Scotland. He targeted the now-defenseless lands of the earl of Dunbar in Roxburgh before visiting fresh destruction upon Lothian. Unlike his last campaign, the Scots were unprepared for an English invasion in 1388 and Edward's men grew rich pillaging the countryside, rustling cattle, and looting the wine cellars of Avignon-obedient abbeys.
Edward's wrath did not stop with his devastation of southeastern Scotland. Once it was clear that there was no threat from France, Edward ordered his half-brother, the earl of Kent, to bring the might of the English navy to bear against Scotland. Kent wreaked havoc along the eastern coastline. Aberdeen suffered one of the worst attacks, as the city was burned, the surrounding area was pillaged, and the ships in its harbor, mostly stocked with barrels of salted fish, were stolen. The Orkney Islands received special attention from Kent in retaliation for the earl of Orkney's attack on Ireland in the summer. Orkney himself was killed in a naval battle against the earl of Huntingdon at Strangford Lough, ending Orkney's long career as admiral of Scotland.
Aftermath
The Battle of Newcastle was the greatest disaster for the Scots since the Battle of Neville's Cross nearly a half-century prior. Contemporary English writers had declared Edward V's victory at Arkinholm in 1385 a triumph, but while the capture of the heir to the Scottish throne was a major feat, the casualties of that battle were relatively low and had fallen most heavily on the French, and Scotland's ability to make war had not been much affected. Newcastle, on the other hand, gutted the southern Scottish nobility and left the country in a precarious position militarily, as Edward's counter-invasion demonstrated.
The consequences of Newcastle did not stop with England's domination of Scotland on land and sea. The gutting of Scotland's southern nobility not only hollowed out the kingdom's defenses, but also left the earl of Carrick's political network in tatters. The triple marriage alliance between the Stewarts, the Douglases, and the Drummonds—three of the most influential families in southern Scotland—had provided Carrick a good base of support against his powerful and often troublesome younger brothers, particularly the earl of Fife. Now, there was nothing to hold Fife's ambitions in check.
In late 1388 and 1389, Fife started installing his own allies into lordships once held by the Douglases. Fife claimed these men were only caretakers sent to guard the border from English attack, but Carrick's wife, Anabella Drummond, his sister, Isabel Stewart, who was Douglas's wife, and Isabel Douglas, who was Douglas's sister and Anabella's sister-in-law, suspected that Fife had plans to disinherit and dispossess their husbands. These three women formed the basis of a pro-Carrick, anti-Fife faction, but Fife's control of the lieutenancy, which was reconfirmed at a general council in December, and the simple fact that so many Carrick, Douglas and Drummond men were either dead or imprisoned in England, put Fife in the catbird seat.
The English consolidated their position as the Scots divided against themselves. Edward V purchased the rights to ransom all the men captured in the battle and then refused to negotiate the release of his new prisoners until the matter of Carrick's ransom, and by extension the whole Anglo-Scottish war, was resolved. This meant that the Scottish march was effectively leaderless and critically undermanned, leaving Scotland dangerously exposed to further English incursions. It looked as though the English would be able to dictate terms in future negotiations with the Scots, but events on the continent soon brought them back to reality. The duke of Brittany betrayed England once again and made peace with France, the king of Bohemia proved to be a worthless ally, the duke of Guelders was quickly becoming more interested in crusade than continuing the war in the Low Countries, and the king of Naples died in Provence. In short, England had seen setbacks everywhere but Scotland. Edward's priority now became making peace with Scotland, and doing so quickly, so that he could turn his attention to the continent. His other priority was to strengthen England's position in Ireland following Scotland's raids on the island, and so installed his younger brother, Richard of Bordeaux, duke of Clarence, as lord lieutenant.
On 20 January 1389, the English and Scots met in the first of a series of conferences at Melrose Abbey. It was mostly a ruin, having been destroyed in Edward's 1385 campaign, but had undergone some repairs. Its greatest advantage was its position, sitting between Roxburgh Castle, which the English controlled, and the lands of Roxburghshire that the Scots had reconquered in the late 1370s and 1380s. It thus allowed both the English and Scots to claim that they were negotiating on their own territory. The two sides picked up where they had left off a year prior, with England making huge financial demands and also offering to drastically cut these demands in exchange for Scotland's subordination to the English crown. Meetings went almost continuously through the spring, as messages flew back and forth to Holyrood and Westminster. A deal was struck on 25 June.
On 2 August, the aged Robert II made a rare appearance on the Scottish marches to attend a ceremonial signing of a new peace. His second son and lieutenant, Fife, was there too. Edward V did not attend and instead sent his uncle, Gaunt, to represent him. The treaty that they sealed was not a permanent peace, as Edward had hoped, but a 20-year truce and financial settlement. Robert was forced to acknowledge that he had reneged on his 1371 agreement to settle the late David II's debts, which still stood at 32,000 marks (£21,333) in 1389. On top of this, Carrick's ransom was set at 60,000 marks (£40,000). The heir to the Scottish throne was to remain a prisoner until two-thirds of his ransom was paid, but payments to the English crown would not count Carrick's ransom until David's debts had been settled. The Scots agreed to pay 10,000 marks per annum for two years and to 4,000 marks per annum thereafter. A schedule for "march days" was set to hear cases of cross-border disputes and England was to keep its positions in southern Scotland until Scotland's financial obligations were met in full. The greater issue of Scottish sovereignty was kicked down the road.
The Treaty of Melrose was a victory for both sides. The long truce secured England's northern border and promised to bring a fortune to the English crown just as it was moving the war with France back onto the continent. Indeed, Gaunt's son, Henry of Bolingbroke, earl of Derby, was already leading an army and marching into England and France's greatest showdown in more than three decades. At the same time, while the treaty inflicted major financial pain on the Scots, they had held onto their independence for the foreseeable future.
The biggest winner at Melrose was neither Edward, who now had the freedom to make war on France, nor Robert, who had almost always preferred peace to war with England. It was Robert's second son, Fife. The payment schedule to which the Scots had agreed would keep Carrick in England for 15 more years and Fife, who was already secure in the lieutenancy, could only expect his influence to grow once their father, who was 73, inevitably passed away. Fife's only opposition was the faction led by Anabella, but her Douglas allies were themselves English prisoners, and they still had to negotiate and raise the funds for their own releases. Anabella would begin building up her and Carrick's sons as figureheads against Fife's rule in the 1390s, which would ultimately lead to the Stewart Civil War.
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Where do we go from here? There are three options for the next update:
- Provençal Civil War: King Carlo III of Naples isn't content with southern Italy.
- Battle of Carcassonne: Henry of Bolingbroke, earl of Derby, confronts the French, with major consequences not just for England and France, but Aragon, Italy, Africa and Prussia.
- Stewart Civil War: King Robert III?
@material_boy AMAZING! WORK! Please tell me that the english will continue to to smash the scots! the conquest of scotland seems to be nearing!
Henry B will do what he was always meant to: be a kickass commander! Smash those french henry b!
Well, we won't see the Teutonic Order in Carcassonne. As the description says, it is the fallout from the battle that will reverberate across Europe. Not sure if people want two battle updates in a row, but let's just say that Carcassonne more or less sets up the second half of Phase 2 and that @A Random Man and others who've been the seeing the word "crusade" pop up with ever-increasing frequency may get their wish after that battle ...
We'll see how Scotland turns out in the Stewart Civil War, whenever we get there ...
Got it, but edward is nearing closer and closer to completing Longshanks noble work!