Invasions of the Bruce
From K.R. Houston Sir: In his review of the recently published biography of Conrad and Barbara Black, Byron Rogers recounts a spat he once had with Lord Black over what constituted the last serious invasion of England. Mr Rogers states that a landing of French troops in 1216 ‘was the last real foothold gained by a foreign army on English soil’.
Yet more than a century later the army of Robert the Bruce, King of Scots, invaded the north of England on several occasions, a tactic that forced his adversaries to the negotiating table and led to the Treaty of Northampton in 1328, in which England recognised Scotland as an independent kingdom.
Either Mr Rogers’s view is a bit skewed, or he is one of those people who considers ‘England’ and ‘Britain’ to be interchangeable; in which case, I suppose, Scottish invasions — even successful ones — don’t count!
K.R. Houston
Edinburgh
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