Siege of Berwick (1333)

Background

In the spring and summer of 1333, King Edward III of England and his ally, Edward Balliol, besieged the Scottish border town of Berwick-upon-Tweed. The siege ended with the Scottish defeat at the Battle of Halidon Hill on July 19th, and Berwick surrendered the next day. It was one of the decisive events of the early years of the Second War of Scottish Independence.

Berwick was the richest town in Scotland and the key to the eastern border. Robert the Bruce had recovered it from the English in 1318, and the 1328 Treaty of Northampton had recognized Scottish independence. But Edward III resented that treaty. In 1332, Edward Balliol won the Battle of Dupplin Moor and was crowned at Scone on September 24th. He granted Edward III lands worth £2,000, including Berwick, in return for his support. After the surprise attack at Annan in December drove Balliol out of Scotland, he turned to England for help.

On March 10th, 1333, Balliol crossed the border. By late March, he had reached Berwick and cut it off by land, while Edward's navy blockaded it by sea. The Scots answered with raids into England, and the small English counter-raid at Dornock on March 25th was part of the same border fighting.

Battle

Edward III arrived with the main army on May 9th, and siege stones for his engines were shipped from Hull on the 16th. The garrison was led by the governor, Sir Alexander Seton, and the Scots held out for weeks. In late June, the defenders set tar-soaked brushwood adrift to burn the English fleet, but the fire went wrong and much of the town burned instead. In a seaborne assault, Seton's son William was killed.

Seton then agreed a truce in late June, under which the garrison would surrender if not relieved by July 11th, and gave his surviving son Thomas and eleven others as hostages. On July 11th, Annan's victor, Sir Archibald Douglas, the Guardian of Scotland, led an army across the border and burned Tweedmouth, and Sir William Keith and two other knights rode about 200 cavalry into Berwick. The defenders argued that this satisfied the truce, but Edward ruled that help had to come directly from Scotland, and he declared the truce broken. Thomas Seton was hanged within sight of the town.

On July 15th, Keith negotiated a new truce, which promised that Berwick would surrender if no relief arrived by sunset on July 19th. Douglas's army approached to relieve the town, but Edward met it at Halidon Hill, and the Scots were defeated that day.

Aftermath

On July 20th, Berwick and its castle surrendered on the terms of the truce. Henry Percy became constable of the town, with Thomas Grey as his deputy.

In 1334, Edward Balliol did homage to Edward III and ceded to him eight counties of south-east Scotland. Berwick remained the English headquarters on the border for nearly 130 years, until Henry VI gave it back to Scotland in 1461, and Richard of Gloucester recaptured it for England in 1482. The town had earlier seen the Sack of Berwick in 1296 and the Siege of Berwick in 1318.