English invasion of Scotland (1385)
Gaunt may have proposed chasing the Scots into the mountains to force them to battle, but the King refused to countenance such a tactic and the army soon withdrew to England.
As Richard's force left Scotland, the Franco-Scottish army counter-invaded England from the West March getting almost as far as Carlisle and ravaged Cumbria and Durham on its return.
In a major biography of the King, Historian Nigel Saul has commented on this that "military retrenchment was not so much a matter of choice for Chancellor Pole; it was forced upon him by circumstances".
Following the rumours of his possible murder, Gaunt retired to Pontefract, only obeying the King's summons to his presence early the next year, accompanied by a large and heavily armed retinue.
[13] The invasion was part of a broader and older policy of taking a robust stand against breaches of the truce,[8] which the contemporary Anonimalle Chronicle says was "badly kept" by Scotland.
[32] Anthony Goodman has suggested that apart from the obvious strategic necessity of the campaign, it had a secondary purpose in increasing Richard's military prestige and political profile,[13] and indeed, says Sumption, "the presence of the English King...proved to be a powerful recruiting agent".
Individual companies varied enormously in size and the status and background of their leaders; in their ranks, near-professionals with long campaigning records mingled with young men who were "armed for the first time".
[34] In Durham,[24] military and naval ordinances were drawn up[35][note 8] collectively by King Richard and his uncles, John of Gaunt (who was also Steward of England) and Thomas Mowbray[37] (the latter having been appointed Earl Marshal on 30 June).
They also gave practical instructions, such as reminding naval ships to stick close to the Admiral in a storm, and guidance on punishments for soldiers' wrongdoing (the penalty for taking women and priests prisoner, for example, was to be death).
[44] They may, in fact, have generally approved of de la Pole's foreign policy as an alternative to the repeated, and heavy, taxes required by Edward III to prosecute his French wars.
Ironically, points out Keen, the nobility brought greater armies to the King's host than the traditional feudal summons would have obliged the lords to provide.
[45] There has been considerable debate as to why [the feudal levy] should have been needed, given the Crown's power for decades past to raise military forces without such an expedient being necessary.
[50][note 12] Richard's old tutor and household chamberlain had been appointed Constable of Dover Castle the previous year, also with the purpose of strengthening the defence of the region.
[58] Although its primary purpose was doubtless financial, Gillespie has drawn attention to the positive publicity that Richard may have expected to enjoy from summoning the feudal host to him: he would be truly Edward I's great-grandson.
[63] Huntingdon escaped to Lancashire, while Richard "in a paroxysm of rage and grief swore that his [half-] brother should be treated as a common murderer".
[34] The army that crossed the Scottish border on 6 August 1385 bore 38 royal standards and over 90 bearing the arms of St. George's, and the flag of St Cuthbert was borne before it.
It appears that the only reason Holyrood Palace escaped similar treatment was that Gaunt himself ordered it not to be touched,[52] possibly on account of the hospitality that had previously been shown there.
According to the contemporary chronicler Andrew of Wyntoun, for the rest, the English army was given "free and uninterrupted play [for] slaughter, rapine and fire-raising all along a six-mile front".
Jean Froissart, for example, suggests that John of Gaunt advocated a swift interceptive attack on Vienne, while the Westminster Chronicle says he pushed for continuing the advance into Scotland.
First, if Gaunt did recommend pushing deeper into Scotland, Richard rejected it as a course of action (probably, says Goodman, on the "reasonable logistical rounds that victuals were scarce and it was likely to lead to starvation among the common soldiers").
He told Gaunt—according to the Westminster Chronicle—"though you and the other lords might have plenty of food for yourselves, the rest, the humbler, and lowlier members of our army, would certainly not find such a wealth of victuals as would prevent their dying of hunger",[72] In the event, no offensive option was taken.
[52] On 8 July a force of French knights journeyed south from Edinburgh; they wore black surcoats with white St Andrew's crosses sewn on.
The Scottish wished to lay siege to Roxburgh Castle, but de Vienne, anxious not to endanger his knights if he could avoid it, insisted that if it was captured, it would be a French prize.
The Scots wanted to fight the kind of campaign which they had always fought, involving fast movement by formless hordes of men, maximum physical destruction and the capture of valuable cattle.
[27] Although the Scottish leaders—the King, of course, and his lords, such as the Earls of Douglas and Moray—respected the French as peers, the Scots generally were hostile to this group of foreigners who could not speak their language and who damaged their crops by riding warhorses many abreast.
Combined with the poor reception of Richard's attempt to reintroduce scutage, there was deep-seated indignation among members of the two Houses over unfair and extravagant benefitting on the part of the King's favourite, the Chancellor, Michael de la Pole, recently made 1st Earl of Suffolk, from the monarch's largesse.
[83][84] This, says Steel, was a far more positive result for the campaign than it has generally been noted: as "southern Scotland had been wasted so effectively that there was no more danger from the north for another three years".
The chevauchée, he suggests, indicates "a headstrong ruler determined to exact vengeance on the Scots" although the King later made Melrose Abbey a grant towards its rebuilding.
Gaunt had been persuaded by the news of a Castilian defeat that he should enter the dynastic contest, and the following year he led an army to make his claim.
[45] A similar instrument of summons was used by King Henry VII in 1492 to raise the army that briefly invaded Brittany and those as late as 1585—when Elizabeth I ordered the invasion of the Low Countries—were clearly modelled on those of 200 years earlier.
