The settlement of the dispute between the two countries which hue seemed to be effected, proved of very abort duration. In a few nonthe a concurrence of important events altogether changed both he domestic condition and the external relations of England. In ho close of the year 1330, Edward at length determined to make a sold effort to throw off the government of Mortimer. The necessary irrangemente having been made, the earl and the queen-mother were eized in the castle of Nottingham on the 19th of October; the execu ion of Mortimer followed at Loudon on the 29th of November ; navy of his adherents were also put to death ; Isabella was placed n confinement in her house at Risings (where alio was detained for he remaining twenty-seven years of her life); and the king took the invernment into his own hands. In the course of the following year Edward seems to have formed the design of resuming the grand lroject of his father and his grandfather—the conquest of Scotland. For thin design he found an instrument in Edward Balked, the eon of ,he late King John, who, in April 1332, landed with a small force at Kinghorn, in Fife, and succeeded so far, in the disorganised state of she Scottish kingdom under the incompetent regency of the Earl of liar, and by the suddenness and unexpectedness of his attack, as to ;et himself crowned at Scone on the 24th of September. Edward, ma this, immediately came to York ; and on the 23rd of November Unica met him at Roxburgh, and there made a solemn surrender to aim of the liberties of Scotland, and acknowledged him as his liege lord. The violation of his late solemn engagements committed by Edward in this affair was rendered still more dishonourable by the :elution and elaborate duplicity with which be had masked his design. Only a few weeks after doing his homage,Balliel found himself obliged to fly from his kingdom; he took refuge in England; various military operations followed ; but at last Edward advanced into Scotland at the head of a numerous army. On the 19th of July 1333, a great defeat was sustained by the Scotch at the battle of Halide° Hill, near Berwick ; the regent Douglas himself was mortally wounded and taken prisoner ; and everything was onto more subjected to Edward Balliol. King David and his queen were conveyed in safety to France. On the 12th of June 1334, at Newcastle, Bailie!, by a solemn instill ment, made an absolute surrender to Edward of the greater part of Scotland to the south of the Forth. But within three or four months Balliol was again compelled to take flight to England. Two invasions of Scotland by Edward followed ; the first in November of this year ; the second in July 1335; in the course of which he wasted the country with fire and sword almost to its extreme northern confines, but did not succeed in bringing about an engagement with the native forces, which notwithstanding still kept the field. In the summer of 1336 ho took his devastating course for the third time through tho northern couuties, with as little permanent effect. On now retiring to England he left the command to his brother John, styled earl of Cornwall, who soon after died at Perth.
From this time however the efforts of the English king were in great part drawn off from Scotland by a new object. This was the claim which he had first, advanced some years before to the crown of Franco, but which lie only now proceeded seriously to prosecute, determined probably by the more open manner in which the Frenoh king bad lately begun to exert himself in favour of the Scots, whom, after repeated endeavours to serve them by mediation and intercession, ho had at length ventured to assist by supplies of money and warlike stores. Charles' IV. of Franco had died in February 1328, heaving a daughter who was acknowledged on all hands to have no claim to the crown, which it was agreed did not descend to females. In these circumstances Philip of Valois mounted the throne, taking the title of Philip VI. He was without dispute the next in the line of the succession if both females and the descendants of females were to be excluded. Edward's claim rested on the position that although his mother, Isabella, as a female, was herself excluded, he, as her eon, was not. If this position had Leen assented to he would undoubtedly
have had a better claim than Philip, who was only descended from the younger brother of Isabella's father. But the principle assumed was, we believe, altogether new and unheard of—and would besides, if it had been admitted, have excluded both Philip and Edward, seeing that the true heir in that ease would have been the son of Joanna Connteas d'Evrenx, who was the daughter of Louis X.. Isabella's brother. It would also have followed that the two last kings, Philip V. and Charles l V., must have been usurpers as well as Philip VI.; the eon of Joanna, the daughter of their predecessor and elder brother, would, upon the scheme of succession alleged by the king of England, have come in before both. Undeterred by these considerations however, or even by the circumstance that he had himself in the first instance acknowledged Philip's title, and even done homage to him for the Duchy of Guienne, Edward, having first entered into alliance with the Earl of Brabant, and taken other measures with the view of supporting his pretensions, made an open declaration of them, and prepared to vindicate them by the sword. The earliest formal announcement of his determination to enforce his claim appears to have been made in a commission which he gave to the Earl of Brabant and others to demand the crown of France and to take possession of it in his name, dated 7th of October 1337.
We cannot here pursue in detail the progress of the long war that followed. Edward embarked for the continent on the 16th of July 1338, and arrived at Antwerp on the 22nd. Of his allies the chief were the emperor and the free towns of Flanders, under nominal subjection to their earl, but at this time actually governed by the celebrated James Van Arteveldt. The emperor made him his vicar, and at Arteveldt's suggestion he assumed the title of King of France. The first important action that took place was the sea.fight off Sluys, on the 22nd of June 1340, in which the English were completely victorious. It was followed by long truces, which protracted the contest without any deoisive events. Meanwhile in Scotland the war proceeded, also with occasional intermissions, but on the whole to the advantage of the national cause. Balliol left the country about the close of 1338; and in May 1341 King David and his consort Joanna returned from France. In 1342 the Scots even made several inroads into the northern counties of England. A suspen.ion of hostilities however took place soon after this, which lasted till the close of 1344.
In 1345 Edward lost the services of his efficient ally Van Arteveldt, who was murdered in an insurrection of the populace of Ghent, excited by an attempt, which be appears to have made somewhat tco precipitately, to induce the free towns to cast off their sovereign, the Earl of Flanders, and to place themselves under the dominion of the eon of the king of England, Edward, prince of Wales. Edward, afterwards so distinguished under the name of the Black Prince (given to him from the colour of his armour), was born at Woodstock, 15th of June 1330, and was consequently only yet in his sixteenth year. His father nevertheless took him along with him to win his spurs, when in July 1346 he set out on another expedition to France with the greatest army he had yet raised. After redncing Caen and Lower Normandy, he proceeded along the left bank of the Seine till he reached the suburbs of the capital, and burnt the villages of St. Germaine and St. Cloud. The memorable battle of Crecy followed on the 26th of August, in which the main division of the English army was commanded by the prince. Between 30.000 and 40,000 of the French are said to have been slain in this terrible defeat. Among those who fell was John of Luxemburg, king of Bohemia; he fell by tho hand of Prince Edward, who thence assumed his armorial ensign of three ostrich feathers and the motto Ich Dien (' I serve '), and transmitted the badge to all succeeding princes of Wales.