the border town of Berwick-on-Tweed, which had been held by the English since 1298.  In 1319, Edward II sent an English army to besiege Berwick, and the Scots replied by an invasion of England in the course of which Douglas and Randolph defeated the English at Mitton-on-Swale in Yorkshire.  The English were led by the Archbishop of York, and so many clerks were killed that the battle acquired the name of the Chapter of Mitton.  The war lingered on for three years more.  The year 1322 saw an invasion of England by King Robert and a counter-invasion of Scotland by Edward II, who destroyed the Abbey of Dryburgh on his return march.  This expedition was, as usual, fruitless, for the Scots adopted their usual tactics of leaving the country waste and desolate, and the English army could obtain no food.  In October of the same year King Robert made a further inroad into Yorkshire, and won a small victory at Biland Abbey.  At last, in March, 1323, a truce was made for thirteen years, but as Edward II persisted in declining to acknowledge the independence of Scotland, it was obvious that peace could not be long maintained.

During the fourteen years which followed his victory of Bannockburn, King Robert was consolidating his kingdom.  He had obtained recognition even in the Western Highlands and Islands, and the sentiment of the whole nation had gathered around him.  The force of this sentiment is apparent in connection with ecclesiastical difficulties.  When Pope John XXII attempted to make peace in 1317 and refused to acknowledge the Bruce as king, the papal envoys were driven from the kingdom.  For this the country was placed under the papal ban, and when, in 1324, the pope offered both to acknowledge King Robert and to remove the excommunication, on condition that Berwick should be restored to the English, the Scots refused to comply with his condition.  A small rebellion in 1320 had been firmly repressed by king and Parliament.  The birth of a son to King Robert, on the 5th March, 1323-24, had given security to the dynasty, and, at the great Parliament which met at Cambuskenneth in 1326, at which Scottish burghs were, for the first time, represented, the clergy, the barons, and the people took an oath of allegiance to the little Prince David, and, should his heirs fail, to Robert, the son of Bruce’s daughter, Marjorie, and her husband, Robert, the High Steward of Scotland.  The same Parliament put the financial position of the monarch on a satisfactory footing by granting him a tenth penny of all rents.

The deposition and murder of Edward II created a situation of which the King of Scots could not fail to take advantage.  The truce was broken in the summer of 1327 by an expedition into England, conducted by Douglas and Randolph, and the hardiness of the Scottish soldiery surprised the English and warned them that it was impossible to prolong the contest in the present condition of the two countries.  The regents for the young Edward III resolved to come to terms with