s English policy
disappears. A few months before the death of Edward Bruce, King Robert
had captured 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, R