King Stephen of England, fighting rebel barons in the south, had sent a small force (largely mercenaries), but the English army was mainly local militia and baronial retinues from Yorkshire and the north Midlands.

The first attack, by unarmoured spearmen against armoured men (including dismounted knights) supported by telling fire from archers, failed.

At this point, Henry led a spirited attack with mounted knights; he and David then withdrew separately with their immediate companions in relatively good order.

He had carried out peaceful changes in the areas of Scotland over which he had effective control and had conducted military campaigns against semi-autonomous regional rulers to reassert his authority; in administration, in warfare, and in the settling of regained territory, he had drawn on the talent and resources of the Anglo-Norman lands.

Having failed to rapidly seize the castle at Wark on Tweed, David detached forces to besiege it and moved deeper into Northumberland, demanding contributions from settlements and religious establishments to be spared plunder and burning.

[12] Richard of Hexham[11] records that: an execrable army, more atrocious than the pagans, neither fearing God nor regarding man, spread desolation over the whole province and slaughtered everywhere people of either sex, of every age and rank, destroying, pillaging and burning towns, churches and houses.Monastic chroniclers often deplore depredations made by foreign armies and sometimes even those of their own rulers[13] but some Scots forces were going beyond normal Norman 'harrying' by systematically carrying off women and children as slaves.

The high born, boys as well as girls were led into captivity[14]In contemporary Britain, this was regarded as a useful source of revenue, like (and not significantly more reprehensible than) cattle-raiding.

[11]The practicalities of this would support the chroniclers' tales of sexual abuse of the slaves and casual slaughter of unsalable encumbrances: For the sick on their couches, women pregnant and in childbed, infants in the womb, innocents at the breast, or on the mother's knee, with the mothers themselves, decrepit old men and worn-out old women, and persons debilitated from whatever cause, wherever they met with them, they put to the edge of the sword, and transfixed with their spears; and by how much more horrible a death they could dispatch them, so much the more did they rejoice.

[11] In the summer, David's nephew William fitz Duncan marched into Yorkshire and harried Craven; on 10 June, he met and defeated an English force of knights and men-at-arms at the battle of Clitheroe.

The garrison of Eustace's castle at Malton to the North East of York began to raid surrounding areas in support of David (or Matilda).

Ailred of Rievaulx gives de Brus a speech in which he tells David that the English and the Normans have always been his true friends (against the Gaels), and without their help he may not be able to keep his kingdom together.

[24] Moving south from the Tees David's army would have had the high ground of the North Yorkshire Moors on its left, and the River Swale on its right.

[11] Their left is thought to have straddled the road, with its flank protected by a marsh; it is not known if the low ground to the east of the ridge was similarly boggy, or if the English formation extended that far.

[citation needed] John of Worcester says that David intended to take the English by surprise, there being a very close mist that day.

[27] In front of the battle were the Picts [ie the Galwegians]; in the centre, the king with his knights and English; the rest of the barbarian host poured roaring around them.

"The second line the King's son Prince Henry arranged with great wisdom; with himself the knights and archers, adding to their number the Cumbrians and Teviotdalesmen ...

The King kept in his own line the Scots and Moravians [men from Moray in North-East Scotland]; several also of the English and French knights he appointed as his bodyguard.

[34] And Alan de Percy, base-born son of the great Alan – a most vigorous knight, and in military matters highly distinguished – took these words ill; and turning to the earl he said, 'A great word hast thou spoken, and one which for thy life thou canst not make good this day.'

Bold France, taught by experience, has quailed beneath your valour, fierce England, led captive, has submitted to you; rich Apulia, on having you for her masters, has flourished once again; Jerusalem so famed, and illustrious Antioch, have bowed themselves before you; and now Scotland, which of right is subject to you,[38] attempts to show resistance, displaying a temerity not warranted by her arms, more fitted indeed for rioting than for battle.

Cover your heads then with the helmet, your breasts with the coat of mail, your legs with the greaves, and your bodies with the shield, that so the foeman may not find where to strike at you, on seeing you thus surrounded on every side with iron.

Since Prince Henry was unsupported and the rest of the army was withdrawing, for the most part in great disorder, he hid any banners showing his party to be Scottish, and retreated towards David by joining the English pursuing him.

His horsemen, however, were not able long to continue their attacks against soldiers on foot, cased in mail, and standing immoveable in close and dense ranks; but, with their lances broken and their horses wounded, were compelled to take to flight.

In Northern England at the end of August sunrise is roughly 6 a.m. and hence the battle lasted no more than 3½ hours; by not long after 9 a.m. all elements of the Scottish army were in retreat or flight.

[45] John of Worcester gives more details on the fortunes of the Scots knights But of [David's] army nearly ten thousand fell in different places, and as many as fifty were captured of his picked men.

[47]David regrouped his forces at Carlisle; the nobles of Yorkshire did not move North against him, and their local levies dispersed to their homes rejoicing at the victory.

[49]At Martinmas, the garrison of Wark surrendered on the orders of the castle's owner (Walter Espec), conveyed by the abbot of Rievaulx.

In 1157, Malcolm travelled to Chester to do homage to Henry who declared that "the king of England ought not to be defrauded of so great a part of his kingdom, nor could he patiently be deprived of it ..." And [Malcolm] prudently considering that in this matter the king of England was superior to the merits of the case by the authority of might … restored to him the … territories in their entirety, and received from him in return the earldom of Huntingdon, which belonged to him by ancient right.

We now know that achieving those aims while England was in turmoil did not prevent all David's gains having to be surrendered when Henry II made the Scottish monarch an offer he could not refuse.

We surely have iron sides, a breast of bronze, a mind void of fear; and our feet have never known flight, nor our backs a wound.

They are those, they are only those who of yore thought not to oppose us, but to yield, when William conqueror of England penetrated Lothian, Calatria and Scotland as far as Abernethy, where the warlike Malcolm was made ours by his surrender The king also spoke with the prior of Hexham, who had come thither with the legate, before [the prior] had appealed to him, concerning the loss sustained by him and by his brethren; and deplored it much, and promised that he would cause the whole to be restored : and moreover that he would compel his men to compensate them for the wrong which had been done to them and to their church, and for the slaying of their vassals.