The commissioners soon perceived with dismay, that all which they could urge against the pretensions of the English monarch, were utterly unavailing. They heard, too, that a royal commission had been issued for the fitting out of a great armament, and intelligence quickly followed that the army was on its march to Scotland.
Edward and his men-at-arms, reached Norham Castle, on the southern banks of the Tweed, where he insiduously invited the Scottish parliament, and all the competitors to attend him, in order to determine the cause which had been referred to his arbitration. They came, but not on equal terms, for the English king brought with him a large body of warlike men, ready to do his bidding; while the parliament found themselves betrayed into a situation in which it was impossible to make any stand, for the liberty and independence of their country. One anxious year for Scotland passed on, while Edward pretended, impartially, to examine the claims of the various competitors, for nine others had now started. Having thus gained time for the furtherance of his ambitious view, he pronounced sentence in favour of Baliol. Baliol was, therefore, placed on the throne of Scotland, with the shadow merely of royal authority, for many and humiliating were the concessions which Edward required of the seeming king. They were such as even his mild and yielding disposition could not brook, and at length, taking advantage of a favourable juncture, he resolved to make a desperate effort for the restoration of his rights.
Rumours were soon afloat that an English army was rapidly advancing, and scarcely was the intelligence received, than it was also heard that some of the most powerful among the Scottish nobles, with Robert Bruce, the father and the son, and the Earls of March and Angus, foreseeing the ruin of their country from the concurrence of intestine divisions, and a foreign invasion, had submitted to the English king. Other rumours followed, fraught with distress for Scotland. Some related that the English troops had actually crossed the Tweed without opposition, at Coldstream; others that Baliol, having procured for himself, and for his nation, Pope Celestine's dispensation from former oaths, renounced the homage which he had done to England, and was already at the head of a great army. Some spoke what they believed, others as they wished; but there was little ground for exultation as respected the movements of the Scotch king. Instead of bringing into the field any effective force, with which to oppose the encroachments of the English, he was constrained to hear of their continual successes. The castle of Roxborough was taken; Edinburgh and Stirling opened their gates to the enemy. All the southern portions of the country were readily subdued, and Edward, still better to reduce the northern, whose rocks and fastnesses afforded some security, sent for a strong reinforcement of Welch and Irish. These men, being accustomed to a desultory kind of warfare, were best fitted to pursue the fugitive Scots into the recesses of their glens and mountains. The quiet valleys and the upland solitudes, which had been untrodden by stranger steps for ages, were visited in consequence, and hostile men sat down beneath the shade of the old Oak of Ellerslie.