Battle of Neville's Cross - The Aftermath

The Aftermath

David II initially managed to escape. However, legend has it that, while he was hiding under a bridge over the nearby River Browney, David’s reflection was spotted in the water by a detachment of English soldiers that was out searching for him. David was then captured by John Copeland, the leader of the detachment. Later, King Edward III ordered Copeland to bring the Scots king to Calais and hand him over. Edward then rewarded Copeland with a knighthood and a handsome annuity. King David was brought back to England and imprisoned at Odiham Castle (King John's Castle) in Hampshire from 1346 to 1357. After eleven years, he was released in return for a ransom of 100,000 marks (approximately £15 million in 2006).

The Battle of Neville’s Cross derives its name from a stone cross that Lord Neville paid to have erected on the battlefield to commemorate this remarkable victory. The fate of the unfortunate David II of Scotland is immortalised in Shakespeare’s play Henry V. In Act 1 Scene 3, Henry says to the Archbishop of Canterbury:

For you shall read that my great-grandfather / Never went with his forces into France / But that the Scot on his unfurnish’d kingdom/ Came pouring, like the tide into a breach, / With ample and brim fullness of his force; / Galling the gleaned land with hot essays, / Girding with grievous siege castles and towns; / That England, being empty of defence, / Hath shook and trembled at the ill neighbourhood.

But the Archbishop replies:

She hath been then more fear’d than harm’d my liege; / For hear her but exampled by herself: / When all her chivalry hath been in France, / And she a mourning widow of her nobles, / She hath herself not only well defended, / But taken, and impounded as a stray, / The king of Scots; whom she did send to France, / To fill King Edward’s fame with prisoner kings…