In July 1385 Richard II, King of England, led one of a long series of 14th-century invasions of Scotland. The campaign was retaliation for Scottish border raids but was also provoked by the arrival of an allied French army in Scotland in 1384. England and France were engaged in the Hundred Years' War, and France and Scotland had a treaty of mutual support. Richard had only recently come of age and was expected to emulate his father Edward the Black Prince's, and grandfather Edward III's martial success. The English nobility had an appetite for war but they disagreed on whether to invade France or Scotland. Richard's uncle, John of Gaunt, favoured France, which would gain him a tactical advantage in Castile, the throne of which he claimed through his wife, Constance. The King's friends—several of whom were also Gaunt's enemies—preferred Scotland as a target. The previous year's parliament had granted funds for a continental campaign; it was deemed unwise to ignore the House of Commons. Without funding, the Crown could not afford a campaign. Richard chose to summon the feudal levy, which had not been called for 58 years, and was never to be again. The summons caused uproar and was abandoned; the Crown raised troops the usual way, contracting with its tenants-in-chief to raise and arm their tenants and receive wages for doing so.

Richard promulgated ordinances to maintain discipline in his invasion force, but problems beset the campaign from the start. One of Richard's knights was killed by the King's half-brother before the army reached Edinburgh. There, the leadership was divided and often occupied itself more with infighting than with campaigning. The Franco-Scottish army retired in the face of the English advance and refused battle, destroying provisions and infrastructure as they retreated. The English swiftly exhausted their food and other supplies. Little of military value was achieved, apart from burning private property. In late August the army withdrew to England. As it did, a Franco-Scottish force raided England from the West March, reaching Carlisle, and pillaging the region. Richard launched few military campaigns following this; his last, to Ireland in 1399, saw his deposition in his absence by Gaunt's son, Henry Bolingbroke, who became Henry IV.

Background

By the late 14th century, England had been at war with France for nearly 50 years. With outbreaks of plague and harvest failures, this strained the country's finances, which could not support a major campaign. Major garrisons in Aquitaine, Brest, Calais and Cherbourg required funding, but three of the four recent parliaments had refused the King grants. Following Richard II's 1377 coronation, facing a resurgent French Crown, many English continental possessions were lost. By 1385 the war had lost momentum; fighting predominantly took place through proxy wars, such as during the 1383–1385 Portuguese interregnum. Richard's chancellor and favourite, Michael de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, was blamed for this lack of success and accused of appeasement. The historian Nigel Saul has suggested that "military retrenchment was not so much a matter of choice for Chancellor Pole; it was forced upon him by circumstances".

King Richard's other supporters, particularly the Earls of Nottingham and Oxford, had fallen out with the King's uncle, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, in 1384, leading to popular rumours that the Duke was to be assassinated during a tournament. Gaunt was a powerful man, the richest in the kingdom after the King, but was not particularly popular: Saul describes him as "too important to be ignored, and yet too unpopular to be able to carry many others with him". The rift between Richard and Gaunt originated in differences over foreign policy. In December 1384 the royal council favoured a military expedition to Scotland, who had been allied to France against England since 1295. Gaunt (and his brother, the Duke of Gloucester), though, had favoured a continental campaign. The meeting collapsed into recriminations, and Gaunt departed angry. Following the rumours of his possible murder, Gaunt retired to Pontefract Castle, only obeying the King's summons to Westminster early the next year, and even then accompanied by a large and heavily armed retinue comprising his household bodyguard and armed tenantry.

France was resurgent under Charles V's leadership, and by 1377 had regained much of the territory won by Edward III, particularly in the southwest. This threatened both English national pride and economic interests. In 1384, de la Pole announced a royal expedition, but avoided specifying its target. The choice was made for the Crown when the French sent Jean de Vienne, Admiral of the French Fleet, to Scotland with an army the following year with about 1,300 men-at-arms and 250 crossbowmen. This force would provide the Scots with technical assistance and encourage an invasion of England. In early June 1385, the Reading council decided in response that Scotland would be the young King's first campaign. The invasion was part of a general policy of responding harshly to breaches of the standing Anglo-Scottish truce; the English Anonimalle Chronicle says it was "badly kept" by Scotland, as the Douglases eroded English holdings north of the border. During this period truces could be flexible; the previous truce—between England, France and Scotland—had been negotiated in 1383. It was frequently broken; in April 1384 Gaunt led a ―a punitive raid characterised by pillaging and brutality, intended to both inflict economic destruction and damage morale―into south-east Scotland. This reached Edinburgh but no further.

Gaunt's preferred Scottish policy was peace―he had recruited Scotsmen into his retinue―mainly for personal reasons. Peace on the northern border would smooth the way for his preferred campaign in Iberia. He had been well treated by the Scots in 1381, when the Peasants' Revolt broke out in England; they had given him refuge for ten days. Gaunt's policy collapsed with de Vienne's forces arriving in Scotland. His pro-peace strategy was not necessarily poorly conceived: if successful, the northern theatre of war would have been neutralised, allowing England to refocus on France. According to the historian James Gillespie, Gaunt's proposal "was a gamble, but a sensible gamble". Their poor relationship influenced the King's rejection of Gaunt's strategy, while Norfolk's and Oxford's influence with Richard also ensured Gaunt's views were dismissed.

The journey north was one of several lengthy progresses—celebratory visits to regions with ceremonial processions through the towns—that Richard undertook during his reign, during which he left a caretaker government comprising the Mayor of London, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, Lord Cobham and Sir Robert Knolles.

The French army in Scotland

Under their treaty with France, Scotland had reassurances that France would support her militarily in a war with England. Gaunt's attempts at furthering peace between England and Scotland did not suit France, which was, says the medievalist May McKisack, "eager to profit by England's domestic embarrassments". A French advance party reached Scotland in May 1384. Their arrival followed the fall of Lochmaben Castle, the last English outpost north of the border. The loss of this castle, says Anthony Tuck, left Cumberland "more vulnerable than it had been for the past fifty years". This provided justification for an English invasion of Scotland over France.

The French fleet under de Vienne left Sluys on 22 March 1385 and avoided the patrolling English ships. It arrived in Leith three days later with 1,315 men-at-arms, 300 crossbowmen and 200 unspecified others ("gross varlets" in the French records). The historian Jonathan Sumption estimates that "with the usual hangers-on" the army amounted to around 2,500 men. They brought horses, 600 suits of armour and other materiel for the Scottish army and 50,000 livres in gold florins for King Robert II. On 1 July, French and Scottish battle captains signed articles of agreement (in French) in Edinburgh outlining their campaign. These ordinances were highly detailed. Their campaign was to launch on 8 July. De Vienne intended to lay waste the entire English border, although, suggests Sadler, this goal was "based on a total lack of understanding of the nature of marcher conflict".

English preparations

The latest truce with Scotland was due to expire on 15 July 1385, and the English muster scheduled for the previous day indicates that the invasion was to be launched immediately. King Richard, nearly eighteen, saw the campaign as an opportunity to cast him as a conqueror of kingdoms in the mould of his father and grandfather. According to the historian Christopher Fletcher, it would show "not just what a King would do but also what a man would do", and Richard would demonstrate his royal independence. Anthony Goodman suggests that apart from the campaign's strategic necessity, its political purpose was to increase Richard's military prestige and political profile, and Sumption notes, "the presence of the English King... proved to be a powerful recruiting agent".

On 10 June, the army reached Nottingham, and was in York by mid-month where the first wages were distributed. The army, expected in Newcastle by the 14th, was nearly a week late. On 16 July suppliers in Durham, Yorkshire, Northumberland, Cumberland and Westmorland were instructed to follow the army "with all victuals needful for maintenance of man and horse and to sell them to the army at a reasonable price for ready payment". Towns along the route were instructed to "bake and brew" food and drink, while their market rights were suspended for the war's duration. A final muster occurred at Berwick.

The King's ordinances Military and naval ordinances were drawn up in Durham, drafted by Richard, Gaunt—as Steward of England—and Thomas Mowbray, Earl Marshal since 30 June, and several "wise knights". The ordinances were promulgated on 17 July.

While disciplinary ordinances had military precedent in Christendom—being issued to the army of the Second Crusade in 1147 and several by Edward III in 1346—those of 1385 are the earliest complete code of English military discipline now surviving. Written in French, they comprise twenty-six clauses, codifying troops' behaviour during the offensive, for example, explicitly prohibiting rape and sacrilege. Clause three forbade soldiers:

They provided practical instructions, such as reminding ships' captains to stay close to the flagship in storms and guidance on punishments for soldiers' wrongdoing. They mandated that English soldiers wear the arms of St George, and that Scottish soldiers caught doing likewise should be killed.

Such ordinances were necessary to maintain discipline, particularly in an indentured army. Since armies were raised only for specific periods, it was impossible to drill martial discipline into troops as with a standing army. Medieval armies were recruited for a campaign season, often of only a few months, and then disbanded. As such it was impossible to ensure that men bound by previous regulations would be recruited again. The Crown preferred the mobility and reliability of paid, professional soldiers over an army of raised feudal tenantry.

Feudal levy