A HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND 



steads and a wasted country to mark his route/ Carlisle became the 

 rendezvous of the English army and the basis of military operations on 

 the western coast. Skinburness was the chief port on the Solway for 

 the collection of stores shipped from Ireland and elsewhere. 3 The king 

 was in the north on several occasions conducting operations and ordering 

 levies. In 1300 there were gathered together to meet him the flower 

 and glory of the English nation, and seldom, if ever, has Carlisle seen such 

 an assemblage within its walls. His son Edward, Prince of Wales, was 

 with him, and among other illustrious names may be mentioned those of 

 Mortimer, Valence, Vere, Bigod, Bohun, and Beauchamp. After the 

 fall of Caerlaverock the king returned to Cumberland in September and 

 divided his time between Holmcultram, Rose Castle and Carlisle, till 

 urgent affairs called him to Yorkshire. In 1 306 Robert Bruce killed 

 the Red Corny n in the church of the Grey Friars at Dumfries and 

 stepped at once into the place of national hero left vacant by the execu- 

 tion of Wallace in the previous year. 3 



King Edward at once saw the gravity of the crisis and nerved him- 

 self for a final effort. His army was summoned to assemble at Carlisle 

 in July, but seized with dysentery he turned aside to Lanercost where 

 the winter of 1306-7 was spent in extreme bad health. 4 In March he 

 was removed to Linstock, 8 a seat of the Bishop of Carlisle, for the pur- 

 pose no doubt of attending the sitting of parliament in Carlisle at which 

 was passed the well-known statute directed against papal encroachments.' 

 But Edward's days were drawing to a close, and the grim struggle on 

 which he had entered was to be left to other hands. Having offered 

 up the litter, in which he travelled, in the cathedral, the indomitable 

 old man set forth from Caldcotes to Burgh by Sands, where he expired 

 on 7 July 1307, ' non relinquens sibi similem in -sapientia et audacia 

 inter principes Christianos.' 7 The effect of the international struggle 

 in Cumberland, which lay so near the theatre of military operations, 

 may well be imagined. Nowhere perhaps can be found a more doleful 

 picture of the ravages of the war than in the plaintive letter of the 

 Bishop of Carlisle, written in 1301, in which he described the devas- 



Cbron. de Lanercost (Bann. Club.), 190-1 ; Wyntoun, bk. viii. 11. 2189-90. 



Cat. of Pat. Rolls (1292-1301), 389, 488, 585 ; Liber Quot. Card. (Soc. of Antiq.), 83, 123, 274. 



8 Chron. de Lanercost, 203 ; Nicb. Trivet (Engl. Hist. Soc.), 407. 



4 The chronicles seem to agree that Edward treated his Scottish prisoners with unaccustomed 

 severity immediately before his death. In February 1307 Dougall Machduel, a Galwegian potentate, 

 having taken prisoners the brothers of Robert de Brus and Sir Reginald de Crauforde while on a foray into 

 Galloway, brought them first to the Prince of Wales at Wetheral and afterwards to the king at Lanercost. 

 Though the prisoners were wounded with lances and arrows the stern monarch sentenced with his own 

 mouth Thomas de Brus to be drawn at the tails of horses from Lanercost to Carlisle, and there to be 

 hanged and beheaded. The other brother Alexander, dean of Glasgow, and Crauforde were sentenced 

 to be hanged and beheaded. The head of Thomas de Brus was placed on the keep of the castle, and the 

 heads of the other two, with the heads of other chieftains, -brought by Machduel, were suspended on the 

 three gates of Carlisle. Nigel de Brus, another brother of Robert, was hanged at Newcastle after con- 

 demnation by the king's justices (Chron. de Lanercost, 205-6 ; Nicb. Trivet, 410 ; Col. of Scot. Doc. [Scot. 

 Rec. Ser.], iv. 489). 



Cat. of Pat. Rolls (1301-7), 479-502. 



Commonly called the Statute of Carlisle and the first of our anti-papal statutes. See the petitions 

 on which it was founded in Rotuli Parl. (Rec. Com.), i. 219-20. 

 i Chron. de Lanercost (Bann. Club), 207. 



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