A king in English chains
The Battle of Neville's Cross on 17 October 1346 was a catastrophic defeat for Scotland and its king, David II. Invading England in support of France under the terms of the Auld Alliance — while Edward III was fighting at Crécy — David's army was destroyed by an English force near Durham. The king himself was captured, beginning eleven years of captivity that would burden Scotland with crippling debt.
David II was the son of Robert the Bruce, and expectations for his reign had been immense. But David was no Bruce. He had spent much of his youth in exile in France, and his military experience was limited. The invasion of 1346 was intended to relieve French pressure by forcing Edward III to withdraw from France. Instead, it handed the English a propaganda victory and removed the Scottish king from his own kingdom.
The battle was fierce. David fought with personal courage, reportedly being struck in the face by two arrows. But the Scottish army was outmatched. The English archers, veterans of Crécy, poured devastating volleys into the Scottish ranks. The Scottish flanks collapsed, and when the rearguard broke, David was captured trying to escape under a bridge. The English knight who captured him reportedly found the king hiding beneath the bridge arch, and David broke several of the knight's teeth in the struggle.
David spent the next eleven years as a prisoner in England — first in the Tower of London, then in various English castles. The ransom for his release, eventually agreed in 1357, was 100,000 merks — a staggering sum that Scotland struggled to pay for decades. The ransom payments drained Scotland's treasury and limited the Crown's ability to govern effectively. David returned to Scotland a changed man, and his reign was marked by pragmatic accommodation with England rather than the defiant resistance of his father's era.