with Philip the Fair. As yet however no open breach had taken
place, and while Edward in 1296 summoned his knighthood to meet him in the
north he called a Parliament at Newcastle in the hope of bringing about an
accommodation with the Scot king. But all thought of accommodation was
roughly ended by the refusal of Balliol to attend the Parliament, by the
rout of a small body of English troops, and by the Scotch investment of
Carlisle. Taken as he was by surprise, Edward showed at once the vigour and
rapidity of his temper. His army marched upon Berwick. The town was a rich
and well-peopled one, and although a wooden stockade furnished its only
rampart the serried ranks of citizens behind it gave little hope of an easy
conquest. Their taunts indeed stung the king to the quick. As his engineers
threw up rough entrenchments for the besieging army the burghers bade him
wait till he won the town before he began digging round it. "Kynge Edward,"
they shouted, "waune thou havest Berwick, pike thee; waune thou havest
geten, dike thee." But the stockade was stormed with the loss of a single
knight, nearly eight thousand of the citizens were mown down in a ruthless
carnage, and a handful of Flemish traders who held the town-hall stoutly
against all assailants were burned alive in it. The massacre only ceased
when a procession of priests bore the host to the king's presence, praying
for mercy. Edward with a sudden and characteristic burst of tears called
off his troops; but the town was ruined for ever, and the greatest merchant
city of northern Britain sank from that time into a petty seaport.

At Berwick Edward received Balliol's formal defiance. "Has the fool done
this folly?" the king cried in haughty scorn; "if he will not come to us,
we will come to him." The terrible slaughter however had done its work, and
his march northward was a triumphal progress. Edinburgh, Stirling, and
Perth opened their gates, Bruce joined the English army, and Balliol
himself surrendered and passed without a blow from his throne to an English
prison. No further punishment however was exacted from the prostrate realm.
Edward simply treated it as a fief, and declared its forfeiture to be the
legal consequence of Balliol's treason. It lapsed in fact to its suzerain;
and its earls, barons, and gentry swore homage in Parliament at Berwick to
Edward as their king. The sacred stone on which its older sovereigns had
been installed, an oblong block of limesto