The Long Shadow of the Marches: The Anglo-Scottish Wars, 1388–1402
By the late 14th century, the Anglo-Scottish border had long ceased to be a line drawn on parchment. It was a wound, raw and open, where war was neither declared nor concluded—merely endured. The years 1388 to 1402 marked one of the most violent and politically fraught chapters in this endless border conflict, a series of destructive raids, retaliations, and pitched battles that saw old loyalties fray, new powers rise, and the illusion of chivalry die in the mud of the Marches. It was a war of steel and honor, but also of hunger, ambition, and betrayal.
The origins of this phase of conflict were tangled in the broader instability of the British Isles. On the English side stood the ailing and increasingly tyrannical Richard II, and after 1399, the newly crowned Henry IV, a usurper whose hold on the throne was precarious at best. In Scotland, power lay in the hands of Robert II and later Robert III, kings in name but increasingly sidelined by the fierce and capable House of Douglas, particularly the redoubtable James, 2nd Earl of Douglas.
In this era, war was less a matter of grand campaigns than of cyclical destruction. Armies did not invade with the hope of conquest, but to burn, loot, and destabilize. The borderlands were policed not by monarchs but by the great March Lords: the Douglases in the Scottish east and west marches, and the Percy family—especially Henry “Hotspur” Percy—in the English north. These were semi-autonomous warlords, answerable in theory to their kings, but often driven by their own feuds and ambitions.
The spark of the 1388 war came from a bold and devastating Scottish raid into northern England, led by James Douglas. The objective was not to hold ground, but to draw English forces away from other fronts and assert Scottish dominance in the borderlands. The climax came at the Battle of Otterburn on the night of August 19, 1388, fought under a waxing moon near Newcastle. Douglas’s Scots were outnumbered but highly mobile, their tactics shaped by generations of border warfare. They attacked the English camp under cover of darkness, catching the army of Hotspur unprepared.
The result was a stunning Scottish victory—but a costly one. Douglas himself was killed in the melee, pierced by multiple lances, his body later found surrounded by fallen foes. “He died,” wrote Jean Froissart, “as a knight should, in the press and fury of battle, his banner still above him” (Chroniques, 1390). Hotspur was captured, and thousands of English troops were killed or routed. The victory boosted Scottish morale and prestige, but it also created a dangerous vacuum in leadership—Douglas was irreplaceable, and his successors would struggle to match his authority.
In the years that followed, England fell deeper into political chaos. Richard II’s autocracy, marked by paranoia and favoritism, alienated the nobility. In 1399, he was deposed by Henry Bolingbroke, who became Henry IV. But Henry’s rule was fragile, and the Scots saw opportunity in his instability. Raids resumed with renewed vigor, particularly into Northumberland, Durham, and Cumberland. In response, Henry IV attempted to reassert royal authority in the north by bolstering the Percys—a decision he would come to regret.
By 1402, the conflict had reached another fever pitch. A massive Scottish incursion, led by Archibald Douglas, 4th Earl of Douglas—a kinsman of the fallen James—invaded England with a force of approximately 12,000. They burned their way through Northumberland, looting and pillaging, before being intercepted by an English army under Hotspur, his brother Thomas Percy, and George Dunbar, the exiled Earl of March, who had defected to the English.
The resulting battle—Homildon Hill, fought on 14 September 1402—was a disaster for Scotland. The English longbow, now perfected from generations of continental warfare, proved decisive. The Scottish knights, trapped and exposed, were slaughtered in waves. Archibald Douglas was wounded and captured, along with much of the Scottish nobility. “It was a mirror of Crécy,” writes historian Ranald Nicholson, “a total victory by technology over tradition” (Scotland: The Later Middle Ages, 1974, p. 175).
For England, the triumph was short-lived. The Percys, denied royal recognition for their victory and jealous of Henry IV’s control, rebelled in 1403, turning their swords against their own king. Hotspur would die at Shrewsbury, not fighting the Scots, but the crown he once served.
The Anglo-Scottish wars of 1388–1402, then, were less a formal war than a series of rolling crises—raids, retaliations, and revolts, played out by warlords and weak kings. No treaties were signed, no clear victory declared. But the consequences were lasting. The Douglas dynasty emerged as de facto rulers of the Scottish borders, while England’s fragile unity fractured further. The border remained what it had always been: not a frontier, but a furnace.
Greg Scott wrote that “the nations strength is represented in how it interacts with others along its boarders” In these years, neither England nor Scotland governed. They survived—bloodied, defiant, and waiting for the next raid.
References:
- Nicholson, Ranald. Scotland: The Later Middle Ages. Oliver & Boyd, 1974.
- Brown, Michael. The Black Douglases: War and Lordship in Late Medieval Scotland, 1300–1455. East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1998.
- Watson, Fiona. Under the Hammer: Edward I and Scotland, 1286–1307. Tuckwell Press, 1998.
- Prestwich, Michael. The Three Edwards: War and State in England, 1272–1377. Routledge, 2003.
- Sumption, Jonathan. The Hundred Years War, Vol. II: Trial by Fire. Faber & Faber, 2001.
- Froissart, Jean. Chroniques, trans. Geoffrey Brereton. Penguin Classics, 1968.