The ruins of Rievaulx Abbey, where Edward II breakfasted on the morning of 14 October
On the morning of 14 October 1322, King Edward II of England sat down for breakfast as a guest of Rievaulx Abbey in Yorkshire. Several members of his nobility accompanied him. Suddenly, a rider burst into the hall. He relays to the king that the forces of the earls of Richmond and Pembroke near Byland have been overcome by a Scottish army under Sir James Douglas. Richmond is a prisoner; Pembroke is in retreat. The king is in danger of capture. There is no time to lose. Edward hastens to his horse, accompanied by his half-brother, the earl of Kent, and his right-hand man, Hugh Despenser the Younger, and several others. He rides off towards Bridlington Priory and then York, escaping the Scots by a whisker. It is the worst military defeat suffered by an English king.[1]
Bold claim I know. Not that the greatest military defeat suffered by an English king was suffered by Edward II, but that I deem it to be Byland in 1322 and not Bannockburn in 1314. Bannockburn was indeed a shattering defeat for Edward II. Here too, he was forced to flee the field after the English position was overwhelmed by the onslaught of the Scottish army, led by Robert I (Robert Bruce). It would be more accurate to say that Edward was dragged off the field by the earl of Pembroke and other lords, despite the king’s wish to continue the fight. And it was no easy escape as Edward had to cut his way south while being pursued by Scottish riders, again under Sir James Douglas. The king’s horse was killed during the pursuit, and he had to be remounted, using a mace to crack the skulls of his Scottish pursuers.[2] Despite Edward’s courage and resilience under pressure, Bannockburn was a monumental loss. One of my mentors, an expert on Edward II, once quipped that Bannockburn was “the eight-hundred-pound gorilla” in the room of Edward’s military reputation. The largest English army campaigning in Scotland for over fifteen years was defeated with high casualties. The king of England was forced to abandon the field, leaving behind his possessions and baggage train. Edward even managed to lose both his shield and privy seal – the latter being the object he used to crank the English governmental machine into action when away from Westminster. It was a mark of Robert Bruce’s chivalrous magnanimity that he returned the seal to Edward II via one of the prisoners he captured, and then released, after the battle.[3]
So, Bannockburn was a terrible military defeat, remembered as such today. Yet Byland was even worse. If the opening introduction did not give enough of a flavour of it, here is the description of the Lanercost chronicler:
When this [the defeat] was known to the King of England, who was then in Rievaulx Abbey, he, being ever chicken-hearted and luckless in war and having [already] fled in fear from them in Scotland, now took flight in England, leaving behind him in the monastery in his haste his silver plate and much treasure. Then the Scots, arriving immediately after, seized it all and plundered the monastery, and then marched on to the Wolds…laying waste that country nearly as far as the town of Beverley.[4]
The Anonimalle chronicler, based in St Mary’s in York, was equally scathing:
The Scots in their invasion at this time gained provisions, treasure, horses and harness belonging to the king, and other goods in the country, to the great shame and loss of the king and the realm, and returned safely to Scotland with their booty.[5]
The defeat was a result of yet another English campaign against the Scots. In summer 1322, having defeated his internal enemies at home, Edward II led an even larger army into Scotland to bring Bruce to heel. However, the massive army was undone by logistics as the Scots ravaged their countryside ahead of the English advance, and Edward’s supply ships were dispersed by both storms and by Flemish pirates allied to the Scots. When the English army attempted to forage for food, according to John Barbour’s Bruce, all they found was a lame bull. This led one of the English commanders, the earl of Surrey, to remark that this was the dearest beef he had ever seen “for a fact, it cost a thousand pounds or more.”[6] The English were forced to retreat back into northern England, and the king disbanded his army. In September, Robert Bruce and his army descended into England, bearing down on Edward II in hope of capturing him and bringing an end to the war. Edward was warned in time and ordered the earls of Richmond and Pembroke to concentrate whatever forces they could at Byland to halt the Scots. As was relayed at the beginning, the earls were defeated, outflanked up a steep hillside by the Scottish army. The king and his companions did a runner and eventually reached York. Again, he lost his treasure and privy seal, though thankfully the seal was merely mislaid in the chaos and was discovered later.[7] But Edward II also mislaid his queen: Isabella of France was staying at Tynemouth Priory with her ladies, including Eleanor Despenser, Hugh’s wife. She was now cut off from York by the Scottish army and had to be rescued, apparently by sea, with considerable danger to her and her household. Treasure, seal, queen and wife: anything else you care to lose, sire.[8]
This defeat was surely the most humiliating Edward II, or any English king ever endured. As Kathryn Warner related “the king was forced to flee from a Scottish force, and this occasion was far more humiliating…in 1322…he was over a hundred miles inside the borders of his own kingdom, and did not even face Bruce on the battlefield.”[9] The news of the defeat caused alarm in London.[10] It also likely convinced the political and military community of the north of England that Edward could not defend the borders of his realm. Andrew Harclay, earl of Carlisle, hitherto a staunch supporter of the king, now decided enough was enough and tried to reach accommodation with Robert Bruce in early 1323. Edward II’s response when he heard of this was to have Harclay executed as a traitor, but later in 1323 Edward himself was forced to make a thirteen-year truce with the Scots, tacitly admitting defeat at Bruce’s hands. Even more than Bannockburn, this was the nadir of his military reputation.[11]
Defending the realm was the most important duty of a medieval monarch. Edward II’s inability to do so, or even at some points to be seen to be willing to try, severely undermined his kingship as much as his political missteps and personal character. It would be listed as one of the six charges against him at his deposition from the throne in 1327. As Ian Mortimer so rightly said “in the middle ages, kings did not have to be good men but they did have to be good kings.”[12]
Great Seal of Edward II. Evidently his subjects did not think he brandished his sword as well as the seal engraver did.
[1] The Chronicle of Lanercost (1272-1346), ed. H. Maxwell (Burnham-on-Sea, 1913), ii, 239-40; The Anonimalle Chronicle, 1307–1334, ed. W. R. Childs and J. Taylor (Yorkshire Archaeological Society record series, cxlvii, 1987), 110-3; S. Phillips, Edward II (London and New Haven, 2010), 429-30.
[2] The best bits of these details come from The Bruce, ed. A. A. M. Duncan (Edinburgh, 1997), 494-7; and Sir Thomas Gray, Scalacronica, 1272-1363, ed. A. King (Woodbridge, 2005), 76-7.
[3] Phillips, Edward II, 232-7.
[4] Chronicle of Lanercost, 240.
[5] AC 1307-1334, 112-3.
[6] The Bruce, 680-1, cited by Phillips, Edward II, 427.
[7] E 159/96, mm. 96, 140, cited by Phillips, Edward II, 430 n.139.
[8] Phillips, Edward II, 429-31; C. Given-Wilson, Edward II: The Terrors of Kingship (London and New York, 2016), 82-3.
[9] K. Warner, Edward II: The Unconventional King (Stroud, 2014), 165.
[10] SC 1/63/169, cited by Phillips, Edward II, 430 n.140.
[11] Phillips, Edward II, 431-6.
[12] I. Mortimer, The Perfect King: The Life of Edward III, Father of the English Nation (London, 2006).