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BALIOL, EDWARD. King John
Baliol had two sons, Edward and Henry. The former seems entitled to some
notice in this work, on account of his vigorous, though eventually
unsuccessful attempt to regain the crown lost by his father. When King
John entered in to the treaty with the King of France, in 1295, it was
stipulated in the first article that his son Edward should marry the
daughter of Charles of Valois, niece to the French monarch, receiving with
her twenty-five thousand livres de Tournois current money, and assigning
to her, as a dowry, one thousand five hundred pounds sterling or yearly
rent, of which one thousand should be paid out to King John’s lands of
Baliol, Dampier, Helicourt, and de Hornay, in France and five hundred out
of those of Lanark, Cadiou, Cunningham, ["John Baliol is known to
have possessed in Cunningham the following lands: Largs, Noddesdale,
Southannan, Dalry, Giffin, Cumsheuch, Dreghorn, the great barony of
Kilmarnock, together with Bondinton and Hartshaw; extending in all to
about L.9,900 Scots of valued rent, or about L.15,000 real rent at
present." – Robertson’s Ayrshire Familie.] Haddington, and
the Castle of Dundee, in Scotland.
This young prince
accompanied his father in his captivity in the Tower, and was subsequently
carried with him to France. After the death of John Baliol, Edward quietly
succeeded to the French family estates, upon which he lived unnoticed till
1324, when Edward II. commanded that he should be brought over to England,
apparently for the purpose of being held up as a rival to Robert Bruce.
Whether he now visited England or not is uncertain; but it would rather
appear that he did not, as, in 1326, he was invited by Edward III. for the
same purpose. At this time, the English monarch was endeavouring to secure
a peace with the King of Scots, but at the same time held himself prepared
for war by mustering his barons at Newcastle. He seems to have thought
that a threat of taking Baliol under his patronage was apt to quicken the
desires of the Scots for an accommodation. Nevertheless, in the summer of
this year, the Scots made a bold and successful incursion into England,
under Randolph and Douglas, and King Edward was obliged, April 1328, to
consent to the treaty of Northampton, which acknowledged at once the
independency of the Scottish crown, and the right of Robert Bruce to wear
it.
No more is heard of Edward
Baliol, till after the death of Bruce, when he was tempted by the apparent
weakness of Scotland under the minority of David II. to attempt the
recovery of his birth-right. Two English barons, Henry de Beaumont and
Thomas Lord Wake, claimed certain estates in Scotland, which had been
declared their property by the treaty of Northampton; Randolph, the
Scottish regent, distrusting the sincerity of the English in regard to
other articles of this treaty, refused to restore those estates; and the
two barons accordingly joined with Baliol in his design. That the English
king might not be supposed accessory to so gross a breach of the treaty,
he issued a proclamation against their expedition; but they easily
contrived to ship four hundred men at arms and three thousand infantry at
Holderness, all of whom were safely landed on the coast of Fife, July 31,
1332.
Only eleven days before
this event, the Scottish people had been bereft of their brave regent,
Randolph Earl of Moray, who was almost the last of those worthies by whom
the kingdom of Bruce had been won and maintained. The regency fell into
the hands of Donald, Earl of Mar, in every respect a feebler man. Baliol,
having beat back some forces which opposed his landing, moved forward to
Forteviot, near Perth; where the Earl of Mar appeared with an army to
dispute his farther progress. As the Scottish forces were much superior in
number and position to the English, Baliol found himself in a situation of
great jeopardy, and would willingly have retreated to his ships, had that
been possible. Finding, however, no other resource than to fight, he led
his forces at midnight across the Erne, surprised the Scottish camp in a
state of the most disgraceful negligence, and put the whole to the route.
This action, fought on the 12th of August, was called the battle of
Dupplin. The conqueror entered Perth, and for some time found no
resistance to his assumed authority. On the 24th of September, he was
solemnly crowned at Scone.
The friends of the line of
Bruce, though unable to offer a formal opposition, appointed Andrew Moray
of Bothwell to be regent in the room of the Earl of Mar, who had fallen at
Dupplin. At Roxburgh, on the 23rd of November, Baliol solemnly
acknowledged Edward of England for his liege lord, and surrendered
to him the town and castle of Berwick, "on account of the great
honour and emoluments which he had procured through the good will of the
English king, and the powerful and acceptable aid contributed by his
people." The two princes also engaged on this occasion to aid each
other in all their respective wars. Many of the Scottish chiefs now
submitted to Baliol, and it does not appear improbable that he might have
altogether retrieved a kingdom which was certainly his by the laws of
hereditary succession. But on the 15th of December, the adherents of the
opposite dynasty surprised him in his turn at Annan, overpowered his host,
and having slain his brother Henry, and many other distinguished men,
obliged him to fly, almost naked, and with hardly a single attendant, to
England. His subsequent efforts, though not so easily counteracted, were
of the same desultory character. He returned into Scotland in March, and
lay for some time at Roxburgh, with a small force. In May, 1333, he joined
forces with King Edward, and reduced the town of Berwick. The Scottish
regent being overthrown at Halidon Hill, July 19, for a time all
resistance to the claims of Baliol ceased.
In a parliament held at
Edinburgh in February, he ratified the former treaty with King Edward, and
soon after surrendered to that monarch the whole of the counties on the
frontier, together with the province of Lothian, as part of the kingdom of
England. His power, however, was solely supported by foreign influence,
and, upon the rise of a few of the opposite hostile barons, in November,
1334, he again fled to England. In July, 1335, Edward III. enabled him to
return under the protection of an army. But, notwithstanding the personal
presence and exertions of no less a warrior than the victor of Cressy, the
Scots never could altogether be brought under the sway of this vassal
king. For two or three years, Edward Baliol held a nominal sway at Perth,
while the greater part of the country was in a state of rebellion against
him.
The regent Andrew Moray,
dying in July, 1338, was succeeded by Robert Stewart, the grandson of
Bruce, and nephew of David II. who having threatened to besiege Baliol in
Perth, obliged him to retreat once more to England. The greater part of
the country speedily fell under the dominion of the regent, nor was Edward
III. now able to retrieve it, being fully engaged in his French wars. The
Scots having made an incursion, in 1344, into England, Baliol, with the
forces of the northern counties, was appointed to oppose them. Two years
after this period, when the fatal battle of Durham, and the capture of
David II. had again reduced the strength of Scotland, Baliol raised an
insurrection in Galloway, where his family connections gave him great
influence, and speedily penetrated to the central parts of the kingdom. He
gained, however, no permanent footing.
For some years after this
period, Scotland maintained a noble struggle, under its regent Robert
Stewart, against both the pretensions of this adventurer, and the power of
the King of England, till at length, in 1355-8, wearied out with an
unavailing contest, and feeling the approach of old age, Baliol resigned
all his claims into the hands of Edward III. for the consideration of five
thousand merks, and a yearly pension of two thousand pounds. After this
surrender, which was transacted at Roxburgh, and included his personal
estates, as well as his kingdom, this unfortunate prince retired to
England. "The fate of Edward Baliol," says Lord Hailes,
"was singular. In his invasion of Scotland during the minority of
David Bruce, he displayed a bold spirit of enterprise, and a courage
superior to all difficulties. By the victory at Dupplin, he won a crown;
some few weeks after, he was surprised at Annan and lost it. The overthrow
of the Scots at Halidon, to which he signally contributed, availed not to
his re-establishment. Year after year, he saw his partisans fall away, and
range themselves under the banner of his competitor. He became the
pensioner of Edward III. and the tool of his policy, assumed or laid aside
at pleasure: and, at last, by his surrender at Roxburgh, he did what in
him lay to entail the calamities of war upon the Scottish nation, a nation
already miserable through the consequences of a regal succession disputed
for threescore years. The remainder of his days was spent in obscurity;
and the historians of that kingdom where he once reigned, know not the
time of his death."
It may further be
mentioned, that neither these historians nor the Scottish people at large,
ever acknowledged Edward Baliol as one of the line of Scottish monarchs.
The right of the family of Bruce, though inferior in a hereditary point of
view, having been confirmed by parliament on account of the merit of King
Robert, this shadowy intruder, though occasionally dominant through the
sword, could never be considered the legitimate monarch, more especially
as he degraded himself and his country by a professed surrender of its
independence, and even of a part of its territory, to a foreign enemy. He
died childless, and, it would also appear, unmarried, in 1363, when he
must have been advanced to at least the age of seventy.
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