of seventeen, had been back in Scotland. Prolonged truces
gave him little opportunity of trying his skill as a soldier, and his
domestic rule was not particularly successful. The full effects of the
Franco-Scottish alliance were revealed when, early in October, the
Scottish king invaded the north of England, confident that, as all the
fighting-men were in France, he would meet no more formidable opponents
than monks, peasants, and shepherds. The five days' resistance of Lord
Wake's border peel of Castleton in Liddesdale showed the baselessness
of this imagination. At its capture on October 10, David put to death
its gallant captain, a knight named Walter Selby. Then the Scots
streamed over the hills into Upper Tynedale, and soon devastated
Durham. Such of the border lords as were not with the king in France
had now prepared for resistance. Beside the Nevilles, Percys, and other
great houses of the north, the Archbishop of York, William de la Zouch,
took a vigorous part in organising the local levies, and in a very
short space of time a sufficient army assembled to make head against
the invaders. From their muster at Richmond, the northern barons
marched into the land of St. Cuthbert, many priests following their
archbishop as of old their predecessors had followed Melton or
Thurstan. On October 17 the forces joined battle at Neville's Cross, a
wayside landmark on the Red hills, a rough and broken region sloping
down to the Wear, immediately to the west of the city of Durham.
Neither host was large in size, and each stood facing the other, with
the archers at either wing, after the fashion that had become Scottish
as well as English. For a time neither army was willing to begin. At
last the English archers, irritated at the delay, advanced upon the
Scots with showers of missiles. Then the struggle grew general and
after a fierce hand-to-hand fight the English prevailed. David was
taken prisoner and was lodged in the Tower, and many of the noblest of
the Scots lay dead on the field. The diversion was a failure; the local
levies had proved amply sufficient to cope with the enemy. In thus
playing the game of the French king, David began a policy which, from
Neville's Cross to Flodden, brought embarrassment to England and
desolation to Scotland. It was the inevitable penalty of two
independent and hostile states existing in one little island.

So war-worn were the victors of Crecy that all the profit they could
win from the