In 1296, the English entered Berwick, the richest town Scotland possessed, and not only destroyed all the property, but slew nearly all the inhabitants.14 They then marched on to Aberdeen and Elgin; and so completely desolated the country, that the Scotch, flying to the mountains, and stripped of their all, had no resource left but to wage from their native fastnesses a war similar to that which their savage ancestors, twelve centuries earlier, had conducted against the Romans.15 In 1298, the English again broke in, burnt Perth and St. Andrews, and ravaged the whole territory south and west.16 In 1310, they invaded Scotland by the eastern march, and carrying off such provisions as were left, caused so terrible a dearth, that the people were forced to feed on horses and other carrion.17 All over southern Scotland, both east and west, the inhabitants were now reduced to a horrible condition, being for the most part houseless and starved. In 1314, made desperate by their state, they rallied for a moment, and, in the battle of Bannockburn, gloriously defeated their oppressors. But their unrelenting enemy was at hand, and pressed them so hard, that, in 1322, Bruce, in order to baffle an English invasion, was obliged to lay waste all the districts south of the Firth of Forth; the people taking refuge, as before, in the mountains.18 This time, therefore, when Edward II. reached Edinburgh, he plundered nothing, because, the country being a desert, there was nothing to plunder; but, on his return, he did what he could, and meeting with some convents, which were the only signs of life that he encountered, he fell upon them, robbed the monasteries of Melrose and Holyrood, burnt the abbey of Dryburgh, and slew those monks who, from age or disease, were unable to escape.19 In 1336, the next king, Edward III., equipped a numerous army, devastated the Lowlands, and great part of the Highlands, and destroyed every thing he could find, as far as Inverness.20 In 1346, the English overran the districts of Tweeddale, the Merse, Ettrick, Annandale, and Galloway;21 and in 1355, Edward, in a still more barbarous inroad, burnt every church, every village, and every town he approached.22 And scarcely were these frightful losses somewhat repaired, when another storm burst upon the devoted land. In 1385, Richard II. traversed the southern counties to Aberdeen, scattering destruction on every side, and reducing to ashes the cities of Edinburgh, Dunfermline, Perth, and Dundee.23
By these disasters, the practice of agriculture was every where interrupted, and in many places ceased for several generations.24 The labourers either fled, or were murdered; and there being no one to till the ground, some of the fairest parts of Scotland were turned into a wilderness, overgrown with briers and thickets. Between the invasions, a few of the inhabitants, taking courage, issued from the mountains, and raised wretched huts in the place of their former abodes. But, even then, they were pursued to their very doors by wolves, searching for food, and maddened with hunger. If they escaped from these famished and ferocious animals, they and their families were exposed to a danger still more horrible. For, in those terrible days, when famine stalked abroad, despair perverted the souls of men, and drove them to new crime. There were cannibals in the land; and we have it on contemporary authority, that a man and his wife, who were at length brought to justice, subsisted during a considerable period on the bodies of children, whom they caught alive in traps, devouring their flesh, and drinking their blood.25
Thus the fourteenth century passed away. In the fifteenth century, the devastations of the English became comparatively rare; and although the borders were the scene of constant hostilities,26 there is no instance, since the year 1400, of any of our kings invading Scotland.27 An end being put to those murderous expeditions, which reduced the country to a desert, Scotland drew breath, and began to recover her strength.28 But, though the material losses were gradually repaired; though the fields were again cultivated, and the towns rebuilt, there were other consequences, which were less easy to remedy, and from whose effects the people long smarted. These were inordinate power of the nobles, and the absence of the municipal spirit. The strength of the nobles, and the weakness of the citizens, are the most important peculiarities of Scotland during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; and they, as I am about to show, were directly encouraged by the ravages committed by the English troops. We shall, moreover, see that this combination of events increased the authority of the clergy, weakened the influence of the intellectual classes, and made superstition more prevalent than it would otherwise have been. It is in this way, that in Scotland, as in all other countries, every thing is linked together; nothing is casual or accidental; and the whole march of affairs is governed by general causes, which, owing to their largeness and remoteness, often escape attention, but which, when once recognized, are found to be marked by a simplicity and uniformity, which are the invariable characteristics of the highest truths that the mind of man has reached.
The first circumstance favourable to the authority of the nobles, was the structure of the country. Mountains, fens, lakes, and morasses, which even the resources of modern art have only recently made accessible supplied the great Scottish chieftains with retreats, in which they could with impunity defy the power of the crown.29 The poverty of the soil also, made it difficult for armies to find means of subsistence; and from this cause alone, the royal troops were often unable to pursue the lawless and refractory barons.30 During the fourteenth century, Scotland was constantly ravaged by the English; and in the intervals of their absence, it would have been a hopeless undertaking for any king to try to repress such powerful subjects, since he would have had to march through districts so devastated by the enemy, that they no longer yielded the common necessaries of life. Besides this, the war with the English lessened the authority of the crown, absolutely as well as relatively. Its patrimony, lying in the south, was incessantly wasted by the borderers, and before the middle of the fourteenth century, greatly deteriorated in value.31 In 1346, David II. fell into the hands of the English, and during his captivity of eleven years, the nobles carried all before them, and affected, says an historian, the style and title of princes.32 The longer the war with England continued, the more these consequences were felt; so that before the close of the fourteenth century, a few of the leading Scotch families had raised themselves to such preëminence, that it was evident, either that a deadly struggle must ensue between them and the crown, or else that the executive government would have to abdicate its most essential functions, and leave the country a prey to these headstrong and ferocious chiefs.33
At this crisis, the natural allies of the throne would have been the citizens and free burgesses, who in most European countries were the eager and resolute opponents of the nobles, whose licentious habits interfered not only with their trade and manufactures, but also with their personal liberty. Here again, however, the long war with England was favourable to the aristocracy of Scotland. For, as the invaders ravaged the southern parts of Scotland, which were also the only tolerably fertile parts, it was impossible that towns should flourish in the places which nature had appointed for them. There being no large cities, there was no asylum for the citizens, and there could be no municipal spirit. There being no municipal spirit, the crown was deprived of that great resource, which enabled the English kings to curtail the power of the nobles, and to punish a lawlessness which long impeded the progress of society.
During the middle ages, the Scotch towns were so utterly insignificant, that but few notices have been preserved of them;