The Steps to the Empty Throne

Edward stormed through lower Annandale for Dumfries. Once again that fair vale became a blackened wilderness, while Bruce dared do no more than harass the English flanks and rear. Then with the early fall of Dumfries and Caerlaverock Castles, the Plantagenet turned west across Nith and entered Galloway. It seemed that he was intent on defeating the Scots in the field rather than on merely gaining territory.

In the past Comyn had talked boldly about the need to confront Edward with the chivalry of Scotland, to gain any lasting success; just as he had talked slightingly of Wallace’s guerilla warfare and Bruce’s caution about pitched battle, and his scorched earth strategy. But now, faced with four times his own numbers, and the huge preponderance of bowmen, he pursued similar tactics himself, and played them skilfully. He fell back deeper and deeper into Galloway, a difficult country for campaigning, cut up with great estuaries, rivers and hill ranges, extending Edward’s lines of communication even further without committing himself to battle. These lines of communication Bruce made it his business to assail.

Once again the strategy paid off, although at terrible cost to the countryside involved. The proud Plantagenet, with his vast and splendid array of armoured and bannered chivalry, and corps of archers unequalled in all the world, found all food and forage burned before him, and his supply lines constantly cut behind him.

He ground to a halt at Kirkcudbright. He had, out of past experience, arranged for a shadowing supply fleet to keep his army serviced from the sea; but he had not understood how shelving and shallow were the estuaries of the wide Solway Firth, and at how few points might shipping approach land.

That Edward actually agreed to parley with Comyn and Buchan, at this stage, was indication of his supply embarrassments.

But the Scots proposals—the restoration of King John to his throne, a mutual non-aggression treaty, and the right of the Scots-Norman nobles to redeem their English estates from those to whom Edward had granted them-the Plantagenet brusquely brushed aside. He promised mercy, but demanded unconditional surrender.

Comyn, Buchan and Umfraville withdrew, angrily, and against the advice of many, decided to make a stand at the River Cree, near Creetown.

Disaster followed, in the first pitched battle since Falkirk. Although Comyn had chosen the mud-flats of the Cree estuary as battlefield, where Edward’s heavy cavalry were at a disadvantage—indeed most knights fought on foot—the terrible host of long bowmen decimated the Scots from afar before ever a single blow was struck. It was the cloth yard-shaft once more which won the day, rather than the knightly lance and sword. Themselves horseless, the Scots leaders fled across the quaking tidelands, to escape into the hills—such as did not remain lying in Cree mud.

Edward turned back to deal with Bruce. It was mid-August.

Bruce had no intention of emulating Comyn’s recent folly. He drew in his harassing forces and retired before the returning English, laying waste the land as he went—very soon his own land, again. Northwards he turned, from Dumfries, up Nithsdale and through the hill passes to Carrick and the plain of Ayr, Edward pressing hard after him—a most trying retreat, but keeping at arm’s length from the enemy advance-guard, burning rather than fighting. And though, at length, Edward’s ships were able to supply him at the port of Irvine, it was now late in September and the English army was in a state bordering on mutiny, magnificent no longer. The road back to England lay a smoking menace behind it. Moreover, Scrymgeour had now brought a large guerilla contingent to aid Bruce, and the Church army was standing at Stirling, with Comyn, to hold the vital waist of Scotland.

Edward made a virtue of a necessity. He sent offer to Bruce of a six months’ truce. This to enable him to withdraw unmolested over the burned-out terrain to England again, without serious loss from guerilla attack. Lamberton advised acceptance. It had little practical value to the Scots; but it did concede to them the status of combatants with whom the King could deal, instead of the rebels he named them. By the end of October his forces were back in their own land, save for the garrisons in such castles as Lochmaben and Roxburgh. But he swore a great oath, as he crossed the Border, that he would return and lay waste the whole of Scotland from sea to sea, and force its rebellious people into submission or death.

If Edward had little cause for satisfaction from it all, no more had the Scots. The SouthWest was again devastated. The only real battle fought had been a bad, almost shameful, defeat, and Comyn’s military reputation had suffered seriously. If Bruce’s had not, he was nevertheless becoming known as a leader who could only burn and destroy his own territories. This situation could not go on and on. And the truce, whatever status it might give them, was only until the next campaigning season.

Morale in Scotland sank low, that winter. If only Wallace would return, men sighed. If only Comyn and Bruce would cut each other’s throats, others muttered. If only Lamberton was allowed to run the country unhindered, the churchmen prayed.

But none of these things happened.

Lamberton was now an unhappy man, indeed. He obtained no cooperation from the other two Guardians, and most of his proposals were automatically outvoted two to one. Comyn was in his vilest frame of mind, soured by his debacle on the Cree, and for once aware of his unpopularity amongst the people. Umfraville proved to be no statesman, and completely under the younger man’s influence. The government of the land sank to new low levels.

It was an open winter, fortunately. The Primate-Guardian besought the Earl of Carrick to come to his manor of Stobo, in the Forest, there to pass Yuletide with him. Bruce was concerned at the appearance of his friend, when he reached Stobo from Turnberry. He had aged grievously in these last months, and there was a strain, tension and brittleness about him unknown previously.

“This cannot continue,” he told the younger man, when they were alone before a fire in the Bishop’s private sanctum.

“To all intents the ship of state is rudderless, drifting helpless. I can do little or nothing. The Comyns would have me out of the Guardianship—and I would thank God to be free of it! But if I go, John Comyn reigns supreme. Now. As he hopes to reign from the throne, one day. I say this would be disaster for Scotland. But we can no longer make pretence to work together.”

Bruce nodded.

“And if you cannot, no man can.”

The other sighed.

“As to that, I do not know. But this I know.

I cannot longer continue. And even if I could, it would avail nothing.

The realm drifts to ruin, calamity. And Edward waits.”

“You will not relinquish the Guardianship? To Comyn!”

“I do not know. God help me—I do not know I I do not see which way to turn.”

It distressed Bruce to see this man, on whom he had relied so surely, thus broken, at a loss.

“The realm needs you. Desperately.

There is none other. Of your stature. And Comyn alone as Guardian—for Umfraville is the merest puppet—would be disaster.

No man’s life would be safe. Is there no way that he may be unseated?”

”I have thought of it, day and night. But he is too powerful.

Already he all but controls Scotland. I may seek to steer the ship of state, but Comyn captains it. Because he holds the sword. You should not have resigned, my friend. You must see it, now?”

“I reached my limit, with Comyn. As you now have done, it seems,” Bruce said sombrely.