Knighthood and War in Scotland
By the summer of 1295 Henry was in the north with his grandfather Earl Warenne. Edward I's deliberately humiliating treatment of King John I of Scotland and his nobles was making war inevitable. Warenne was King John's father in law, used as an intermediary by Edward. In 1294 Philip IV of France had taken back Aquitaine from the English crown and now negotiated a treaty with the Scots to wage war on Edward on two fronts. During March 1296 Edward I's army surrounded Berwick on Tweed, then the largest town in Scotland and an important seaport. It was here on 30 March that Henry Percy was knighted by the King. Later on the same day the town was taken and the ruthless king, apparently provoked by the inhabitants previously baring their buttocks at him, ordered the city put to the sword "whatever the age or sex" and according to the Scotichronicon 7,500 were executed. Percy under Warenne's command was sent north to Dunbar where the castle was held by the Earls of Mar, Menteith and Ross, together with many lesser nobles. After they had beaten a Scottish force outside the castle the king joined them, and the castle soon surrendered. The rest of Scotland was occupied in the space of a few weeks and English administrators installed. King John Balliol was forced to abdicate and Warenne appointed to govern Scotland as a province. Having proved his ability Henry Percy was given the task of governing Ayr, Galloway and Cumberland, based at Carlisle Castle. With King Edward now turning his attention to affairs in France there was only a year or so of peace before the situation in Scotland began to unravel. In the summer of 1297 William Wallace murdered the English sheriff of Lanark and was joined by Robert Bruce, Bishop Lockhart, James Stewart and Sir William Douglas in the Scottish lowlands while Andrew Murray started a Highland uprising. Working closely with Robert Clifford from Westmorland Percy confronted the other rebels at Irvine while Wallace was in central Scotland, and negotiated their submission, subduing southern Scotland for a while. Warenne then began an expedition to hunt down Wallace and Murray, finding them waiting north of the River Forth near Stirling Castle. The ensuing Battle of Stirling Bridge was a disaster for the English army. Percy and his fellow commanders could only watch helplessly from the castle as their infantry, caught on the far side of the one narrow bridge were slaughtered. Murray was however killed in the battle. The English were temporarily expelled from Scotland and on the defensive, with the Scots raiding northern England. In the following spring of 1298 King Edward returned from France and assembled a large army, including many Welsh longbow archers, to begin a new and determined assault on Scotland. They caught up with Wallace at Falkirk on 22 July where Henry Percy was part of the fourth reserve division of experienced and highly mobile cavalry.
Read more about this topic: Henry De Percy, 1st Baron Percy
Famous quotes containing the words war and/or scotland:
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