Durham Field [Child 159]

DESCRIPTION: Edward III is at war in France, so the king of Scotland invades England. In battle, he fares badly and is taken prisoner to London. Edward has returned. The Scottish king admits an English yeoman is worth a Scottish knight.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: before 1750 (Percy folio)
KEYWORDS: fight war prisoner
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
1327-1377 - Reign of King Edward III of England
1346 - Battle of Neville's Cross (Durham). King David of Scotland defeated and taken prisoner by the English, even though their main army was fighting in France
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (7 citations):
Child 159, "Durham Field" (1 text)
Hales/Furnival-BishopPercysFolioManuscript, volume II, pp. 190-200, "Durham ffeile" (1 text)
Quiller-Couch-OxfordBookOfBallads 126, "Durham Field" (1 text)
Morgan-MedievalBallads-ChivalryRomanceAndEverydayLife, pp. 147-154, "Durham Field" (1 text)
Sidgwick-BalladsPoemsIllustratingEnglishHistory, pp. 22-31, "Durham FIeld" (1 text)
DigitalIndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse, #3249
MANUSCRIPT: {MSPercyFolio}, The Percy Folio, London, British Library MS. Additional 27879, page 245
Roud #3998
NOTES [2735 words]: According to Fowler, p. 158 n. 25, this is one of eighteen ballads in the Child collection found only in the Percy Folio.
I strongly doubt that this was traditional, although it may have been intended for a "popular" rather than a courtly audience. For one thing, the event it describes is too old. And it's too nationalistic; it lacks the impartiality of most ballads.
Incidentally, although you often see the name of this listed as "Durham Ffield," that is genuinely not correct; in the Middle Ages, "F" at the start of a word was written (more or less) "Ff." So when the Percy Folio wrote "Ffield," that should be transcribed as "Field."
The Battle of Neville's Cross (almost never called Durham, although it took place near that city) was partly the result of the ongoing wars between England and Scotland and partly the result of the wars between England and France. It started with Edward II's loss at Bannockburn. He never did manage to negotiate a peace, so the Scots continued to raid the north of England, and Edward II never managed to stop it. Then Edward II was deposed in 1326 and killed in 1327 by his wife Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer, replacing him with his son Edward III. But Edward was, at first, a figurehead; it was Isabella and Mortimer running things. And they needed to put the country in order after the chaos of Edward II's incompetent reign. Among other things, they needed peace with the Scots. They made a peace in 1328 -- the crowning achievement of the reign of Robert the Bruce, who died the next year (Magnuson, pp. 190-196).
But Edward III did not like the peace made in his name, and when he overthrew Isabella and Mortimer in 1330, the peace went out the window. And Edward had a peculiar card to play: Although his grandfather Edward I had deposed the legitimate king John Balliol (for background, see the notes to "Gude Wallace" [Child 157]), Edward III took up the cause of John Balliol's son Edward Balliol (c. 1283-1364). Without formally abrogating the peace, Edward III encouraged Balliol to try to retake his inheritance from Robert Bruce's son David II, who had been born in 1324 and was still unable to rule in his own right. Balliol took 88 ships from the Humber to Fife and, with English help won a battle over the Scottish regent at Dupplin Moor in July 1332 (Keay/Keay, pp. 57, 275). Balliol then went to Scone to be crowned King of Scotland -- and promptly pledged fealty to Edward III and ceded large territories (Magnusson, p. 197. The deal is a good illustration of Edward's tendency to overreach; if he had tried for less, he might actually have gotten i).
But Balliol dodn't know how to run a country, and was (correctly) perceived as an English puppet anyway, and a December 1332 raid on Annan, where he was staying, sent him scurrying (supposedly only partially clothed) for shelter in England (Magnusson, p. 198). Edward III came to his aid, and the two sides prepared to battle it out for the throne. Edward III took an army to conquer Berwick, and it met the army of the new regent, Archibald Douglas, at Halidon Hill on July 19, 1333. Edward at this battle showed the tactic that served him so well in the French wars, the combined use of archers and men-at-arms, and the Scots were utterly defeated -- Douglas and three other Scots earls fell; the English supposedly lost only 14 men! (Magnusson, pp. 198-199). The English felt that Bannockburn had been avenged. England, on its face, ruled Scotland, and David Bruce had to flee to France. For some years, the English tried to support Balliol on the throne, but the people simply didn't accept it, and Edward could not or would not commit the resources to keep his supporters safe (Reid, p. 129). The regent Sir Andrew Moray managed to slowly turn things around, fighting a guerilla war that the English just didn't know how to combat; in 1342 Balliol again had to flee to England (Reid, p. 130). It didn't take long for Edward III to decide that he was more interested in fighting France than Scotland (Magnusson, pp. 199-202).
In 1337, Edward claimed the throne of France and launched the Hundred Years' War. At first, he couldn't get the French to fight, and drove himself to bankruptcy trying to raise armies (Wagner, p. 121) -- but on August 26, 1346 he won the Battle of Crecy and settled down to the siege of Calais. Suddenly it was the French who were in trouble, and they called upon David Bruce (who had returned to Scotland in 1341, by which time almost all of Scotland was back in Scots hands; Magnusson, p. 202; Oram, p. 134). The Scots had been raiding England anyway; David was happy to escalate the conflict. The time seemed opportune, since Edward and many of his high nobles were in France; England seemed stripped of defenders.
The Scottish army entered England near the peel tower of Liddell (map on p. 551 of Sumption), which was on the border almost due north of Carlisle in Cumbria. They sacked Liddell and killed its commander (Sumption, p. 551). Then they sacked Lanercost Priory (Webb, pp. 20-21. The former was considered a legitimate act of war; the latter wasn't, but that rarely stopped raiders). They passed through Cumbria to County Durham via Hexham. looting all the way and facing little opposition once Liddell had fallen.
That success perhaps maid the raiders overconfident. They didn't even hurry to occupy Durham before the battle. (The town apparently had offered a ransom -- Wagner, p. 228 -- and the Scots probably thought they had it at their mercy anyway. Webb, p. 36, suggests on the basis of Andrew Wyntoun's Chronicle that David may have been drinking when told there were English forces in the area) The Scots were overconfident. Archbishop William de la Zouche of York, Lord Ralph Neville, Lord Henry Percy, and others gathered an army at Durham to meet the Scots (Magnusson, p. 203). The stage was set for battle at Neville's Cross, just west of Durham (it is now inside the Durham suburban area).
(For the record, Lord Neville had nothing to do with the "Neville's Cross" of the song title; there were apparently several stone crosses in the vicinity of Durham, and one near the battlefield was called Neville's Cross. One suspects it seemed like a good omen to Ralph Neville, though.)
Knowing what happened in a medieval battle is usually almost impossible (e.g. the Lanercost Chronicle claimed that the Scots had 22,000 men while Andrew of Wyntoun would only credit them with 2,000; Froissart gives the impossible figure of 50,000; Webb, pp. 66, 82,99), but it is thought that the Scottish army was a little bigger than the English; Wagner, p. 228, suggests it was the largest Scottish army assembled in the fourteenth century. (Sumption, p. 550, thinks the Scots might have had 12,000, whereas on p. 552 he credits the English into no more than 4000.) King David's army organized in three schiltrons, the phalanxes they had used to win at Bannockburn 32 years earlier. David commanded the center schiltron, his nephew Robert Stewart was on his left, and Sir William Douglas on the right. The Scots did not expect to encounter an English army so soon; it was Douglas who first encountered the English forces and was driven back in a preliminary skirmish (Sumption, p .552).
The English were also in three divisions, the Archbishop of York (assisted by Sir Thomas Rokeby) on the left, Lord Neville in the center (making him at least de facto the army commander), and Percy on the right. They also had a cavalry reserve under Edward Balliol. (Magnusson, pp. 203-204).
But the English army had more than just footmen and cavalry; they also had longbowmen. Magnuson, p. 204, thinks that the Scots attacked, and were pushing the English back before Balliol wrecked their advance with flank attack, but Reid, pp. 131-132, thinks the Scots tried to wait out the English, not wanting to fight another Halidon -- particularly since they would have to fight uphill. After seven hours of that, the English pushed their archers forward and started firing into the Scots ranks, and that was what was forced the Scots -- disorganized by their casualties -- to advance and be overwhelmed. Reid doesn't even mention Balliol. Webb, pp. 38-39, thinks that Douglas advanced his division and was attacked by the English bowman, who also stopped a Scottish cavalry charge before the rest of the Scots army moved up and were attacked by Balliol.
Whatever the course of the battle, three things stood out: dozens of Scottish nobles were dead; King David was wounded among his troops (twice hit by arrows, according to Wagner, p. 229), overpowered, and captured -- and Robert Stewart, David's heir until and unless the unmarried king could have a child, retreated after the battle with his schiltrom. There was disagreement, which lasts to this day, over whether he cut and ran to save his own skin or did his best to save the wreck of the army. What is certain is that, as the senior living member of the royal family (the only one, really), he became regent.
David was eventually freed, after 11 years, but never had a legitimate child; the descendants of Robert Stewart became the Stewart/Stuart/Steward dynasty. In the short term, Robert avoided English adventures -- and probably did his best to see to it that David was not released (Magnuson, pp. 204-205).
It will I assume be evident that "Durham Field" completely misrepresents what was going on, with its claim that David intended to take over all England and distribute it among his nobles rather than just run a big raid for fame, plunder, and maybe a little territorial advantage. If that claim is based is based on anything -- and it probably isn't -- it is perhaps David's claim, reported in one of the chronicles, that he would soon see London (Webb, p. 22). That prophecy proved true, but David didn't make it there at the head of his troops!
Another blatant mistake is the claim that the Bishop of Durham -- the chief officer of the county and in charge of its military -- was present; he was almost certainly away, probably in France (Webb, p. 35; the proof of this is that the prior of Durham had to write a letter to the bishop to explain what had happened (another account describes the prior having a vision about invoking the aid of St. Cuthbert -- Webb, p. 75 -- so the whole thing was very mystical). Froissart said the bishop was there, according to Webb, p. 60, but Froissart was notoriously unreliable; he also said that England's Queen Philippa and the Archbishop of Canterbury were there -- Webb, p. 97 -- and that we would know about from other sources if true! Froissart didn't even locate the battle correctly; he placed it at Newcastle -- Webb, p.100). The song is so far from the truth that I find it hard to even comment on the details in the song; often I can't figure out even what the mistakes are based on. Child's notes will do as a starting point for the various inaccuracies. Earls whom Sumption, p. 553, says were present were Moray (killed), Douglas (captured), Fife (captured and prosecuted as a traitor, since he had previously sworn fealty to England), and Menteith (captured and executed as a traitor). Ranald, Lord of the Isles, had supposedly been killed even before the battle in a fight with the Earl of Ross (Webb, p. 69, quoting Andrew of Wyntoun -- who in addition to the earls named by Sumption also listed Strathearn as killed and Wigtown and Sunderland as captured; Webb, p. 73)
The song is at least right in saying that David was said to have been captured by an English esquire, or perhaps a yeoman, John de Coupland or Copeland (Oram, p. 135). David may have hidden under a bridge or some such place; apparently Coupland found him while hunting ransomable prisoners (Webb, pp. 42-43, who says that Copeland was wanted as a border reiver, but catching David got him a pardon and, of course, a big payment. Although David apparently knocked out out a couple of Coupland's teeth before being forced to yield; Sumption, p. 553.)
Webb, p. 44, reports a claim that, in addition to David, four earls, two barons, a bishop, and an archbishop were captured. However, at this time, there would have been no archbishop for the English to capture -- unless they captured their own Archbishop Zouche!). The English may not have captured such high clergy, but the loss of lords was bad enough: Scotland "lost in a single day almost all of its leaders" (Sumption, p. 553).
The DigitalIndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse and Robbins, p. 263, cross-reference this with their DIMEV #4861=Brown/Robbins-IndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse #3117, which is Laurence Minot's poem "The Battle of Neville's Cross," beginning "Sir David the Bruse was at distance When Edward the Baliolfe [sic.] rade with his lance." That also exists in only one copy (London, British Library, MS. Cotton Galba E.ix), although that copy is much closer to the time of the event.
The easiest way to find Minot's verse is now Osberg's edition; this is also one of four Minot poems printed by Robbins (pp. 31-34). Osberg modernizes the orthography; Robbins gives the original, which still uses both Þ and ȝ. Both include helpful commentaries.
I don't know if Child ignored "The Battle of Neville's Cross" or if he was unaware of it, but it is probably the former. He should have had access to it; it had been published by Ritson in 1825 (Poems written anno MCCCLII. By Laurence Minot) and in Thomas Wright's 1859 Political Poems and Songs Relating to English History, Volume I.
"Laurence Minot, who gives his name twice ([poem] 5 l[ine]1; [poem] 7 l[ine] 20), wrote eleven poems on the wars of Edward III, preserved in MS. Galba E IX. f[olio] 49 r[ecto] ff. (early 15th century). The poems were written between 1333 and 1352, each apparently soon after the event that it commemorates. Later the author revised them, and united them by placing at their heads metrical titles that link the neighboring pieces together" (Wells, p. 215). Wells considers the dialect to be Northern with some midland forms. Emerson, who on pp. 157-165 prints three Minot poems (but not "Neville's Cross") under the improbable chapter title "The Songs of Lawrence Minot," also considers his dialect to be northern. Emerson, p. 291, says that there were people named Minot in Yorkshire and Norfolk in the fourteenth century; he thinks the midland forms might have been adjustments made by a copyist rather than the result of Minot living in a region which used a mixed dialect.
The first two poems in Minot's collection are about the battle of Halidon Hill (July 19. 1333); "Neville's Cross," which is #IX, is about an event from 1346; poem XI refers to Edward III's attack on Guînes/Guisnes in 1352 (Osberg, p. 110).
Nothing is known about Minot except his name; although he probably wrote his poems in hope of courting favor, there is no hint that Edward III ever paid him any attention.
I certainly don't see much link between the Minot and Percy Folio poems. "Durham Field," except for an odd first stanza which I suspect is grafted in, is in standard ballad meter (4343, rhymed xaxa). The Minot poem (Osberg, pp. 59-60) is in irregular stanzas, six lines or eight lines, with the first four or six lines rhyming aaaa(aa) and the last two bb (although Minot several times uses the same rhyme for all the lines of the stanza). The meter is... interesting. Osberg prints it in four-stress lines with a caesura, but Robbins, p. 31, says it was written in short lines. Wells, p. 216, says that Minot's "Poems 2, 5, 9, 10, 11 are in alliterative long lines aaaabb with prevailing trochaic or dactylic effect." That's a little strong; although the rhymes are pretty consistent, both alliteration and meter are frequently violated. I would be inclined to say that Minot strove for alliteration, but did not insist on it, and as far as meter goes, he probably tried but he was more interested in saying what he wanted to say than in making it scan. RItson called him a good versifier, but if anyone since thinks he was a great poet, I've not heard about it. (E.g. Sisam, p. 151, says "Minot was a better patriot than poet, and his boisterous contempt for the Scota and the French reflects the spirit of England in the early days of Edward III's greatness.")
Collette, according to Osbert, p. 102, observed a strong link between Minot's poem about this battle and a Latin poem that opened "Si valeas paleas, Vaolyes, dimitte timorem." - RBW
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