Invasion of Scotland, 1482

At this time and during nearly two years before the king’s death, king Louis failed in the strict observance of the engagements which he had previously entered into as to the truce and the tribute ; as he was only watching for a time at which he might be released from all fears of the English. For after the agreement’ had become generally known, which had beat made with the people of Flanders, and by which the daughter of duke Maximilian was to be given in marriage to the Dauphin, the king was defrauded of one year’s tribute; while in the meantime, captures began to take place, both of the subjects and ships of the two kingdoms. Amid these tempests in which the English were thus involved, the Scots, encouraged by the French, of whom they had been the allies of old, imprudently broke the treaty of peace for thirty years -which we had formerly made with them ; and this, notwithstanding the fact that king Edward had long paid a yearly sum of one thousand marks by way of dowry for Cecily, one of his daughters, who had been promised in marriage by a formal embassy to the eldest son of the king of the Scots. In consequence of this, a tremendous and destructive war was proclaimed by Edward against the Scots, and the entire command of the expedition was given to Richard, duke of Gloucester, the king’s brother.

What he effected in this expedition, what sums of money, again extorted under the name of benevolences, he uselessly squandered away, the affair in its results sufficiently proved. For no resistance being offered, he marched as far as Edinburgh with the whole of his army, and then leaving that most opulent city untouched, returned by way of Berwick, which town had been taken upon his first entrance into that country; upon which, the castle, which had held out much longer, not without vast slaughter and bloodshed fell into the hands of the English. This trifling, I really know not whether to call it gain or loss, (for the safekeeping of Berwick each year swallows up ten thousand marks), at this period diminished the resources of the king and kingdom by more than a hundred thousand pounds. King Edward was vexed at this frivolous outlay of so much money, although the recovery of Berwick above-mentioned in some degree alleviated his sorrow. These were the results of the duke’s expedition into Scotland in the summer of the year of our Lord, 1482, the same being the twenty-second year of the reign of king Edward.

(3rd Continuation of the Croyland Chronicle)