When the news of the proceedings at Dumfries and the general rising in the south of Scotland reached Edward he was at the city of Winchester.  He had been lately making a sort of triumphant passage through the country, and the unexpected news that Scotland which he had believed crushed beyond all possibility of further resistance was again in arms, is said for a time to have driven him almost out of his mind with rage.

Not a moment was lost.  Aylmer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, was at once commissioned to proceed to Scotland, to “put down rebellion and punish the rebels,” the whole military array of the northern counties was placed under his orders, and Clifford and Percy were associated with him in the commission.  Edward also applied to the pope to aid him in punishing the sacrilegious rebels who had violated the sanctuary of Dumfries.  As Clement V was a native of Guienne, and kept his court at Bordeaux within Edward’s dominions, his request was, of course, promptly complied with, and a bull issued, instructing the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of Carlisle to excommunicate Bruce and his friends, and to place them and their possessions under an interdict.  It was now that the adhesion of the Scottish prelates was of such vital consequence to Bruce.  Had the interdict been obeyed, the churches would have been closed, all religious ceremonies suspended, the rites of the church would have been refused even to dying men, and the dead would have been buried without service in unconsecrated ground.  So terrible a weapon as this was almost always found irresistible, and its terrors had compelled even the most powerful monarchs to yield obedience to the pope’s orders; but the Scotch prelates set the needs of their country above the commands of the pope, and in spite of repeated bulls the native clergy continued to perform their functions throughout the whole struggle, and thus nullified the effect of the popish anathema.

King Edward was unable himself to lead his army against the Scots, for he was now sixty-seven years old, and the vast fatigues and exertions which he had undergone in the course of a life spent almost continually in war had told upon him.  He had partially lost the use of his limbs, and was forced to travel in a carriage or litter; but when he reached London from Winchester a grand ceremony was held, at which the order of knighthood was conferred by the king upon the Prince of Wales, and three hundred aspirants belonging to the principal families of the country, and orders were given that the whole military array of the kingdom should, in the following spring, gather at Carlisle, where Edward himself would meet them and accompany them to Scotland.  The Earl of Pembroke, with Clifford and Percy, lost no time in following the orders of Edward, and with the military power of the northern counties marched into Scotland.  They advanced unopposed to the Forth, and crossing this river proceeded towards Perth, near which town the Scottish army were gathered.  Archie Forbes, who stood very high in favour with Bruce, had urged upon him the advantage of carrying out the tactics formerly adopted by Wallace, and of compelling the enemy to fall back by cutting off all food supplies, but Bruce would not, in this instance, be guided by his counsel.