Harry Pearson

Clash of Crowns: The Battle of Byland 1322

(Pen & Sword, 2024) 192 pp. $42.95

In 2023, I was fortunate enough to participate in an excursion from the International Medieval Congress in Leeds to the site of the battle of Byland for a battlefield walk led by the author of Clash of Crowns, Harry Pearson. His comments during the tour, echoing those in his book, that this battle represents one of the most overlooked and neglected episodes in British history resonated deeply; as a scholar of the early fourteenth century, I was ashamed to admit that I was barely aware of this battle. Pearson shared much of his research and knowledge of the battle during the walk, where he pointed out the terrain, emphasized the courageous military feats of the victorious Scots, and underscored the significance of the battle for ensuing political realities for both the English and Scots. At the time, I recognized how important an acquaintance with this battle was for understanding this pivotal period for England and Scotland.

Since that excursion, I have also been fortunate enough to read Pearson’s text, originally published in 2022 by Cerridwen Publishers and now in a new edition by Pen & Sword Books. As several of the other reviewers have remarked, Pearson’s book is delightfully readable, and is geared largely towards a non-specialist audience. Pearson provides a lively narrative that covers the historical background to the battle of Byland, explaining the growing tensions between England and Scotland beginning in the thirteenth century, and offers interpretations of the broader implications of the Scottish victory at Byland in the book’s final chapter. In addition, the book is full of images, including color plates, and maps, and is supplemented by appendices that address the 1327 Treaty of Northampton, the realities of early-fourteenth-century armies and their equipment, and the archaeological evidence that has shed light on the actual siting of the battle; the final appendix suggests multiple battlefield walks for taking in the site.

The bulk of the book covers centuries of historical context for understanding the underlying issues that culminated in the battle of Byland, beginning with developments and events as early as the eleventh century that shaped the mostly cordial relationship between Scotland and England. However, quite rightly, Pearson notes that the strongly imperialist tone of England towards its northern neighbor only emerged in the late thirteenth century under Edward I, the “Hammer of the Scots”, the Latin form of which nickname Pearson uses as a title for chapter 3. However, one wonders why, for a chapter largely devoted to discussing Edward I, Pearson did not use the scholarship of Michael Prestwich, whose Yale English Monarchs volume remains the standard biography. [1] The deteriorating relations between England and Scotland, which Pearson largely attributes to Edward I himself, are thus presented with a Scottish bias: Edward’s ambitions and ruthlessness led to the rise of plucky Scottish resistance (the subject of chapter 4) and ultimately the Scots’ rallying around the figure of Robert Bruce (the subject of chapter 5) whose determination, skill, and good luck in outliving Edward I led the Scots to military victory more than once (the subject of chapters 6 and 7). The book’s crescendo continues through the post-Bannockburn period, repeating the oft-trod trope of an inept and unlucky Edward II whose repeated military failures, despite the presence of extremely able commanders such as Andrew Harclay (whose name Pearson inconsistently spells as both “Harcla” and “Harclay”), foreshadowed another eventual Scottish victory at Byland. The actual battle of Byland is not reached until chapter 9, by which point the reader has been given a very good background of Anglo-Scottish history and is ready for the climax of the book.

The description of the battle itself is carefully organized chronologically, with notes about topography and geography interspersed among the discussion for clarifying the respective armies’ movements. It would have been helpful to have some of the locations mentioned in the text more clearly included on the map on the facing page, however (100-101). A familiarity with the location is key for understanding this battle, and the various maps, including a topographical map, enhance the reader’s comprehension of the decision Robert Bruce made to split the Scottish army and, by a detachment scaling a steep slope, enact a surprise flanking of the larger English force that was preoccupied fighting against the main Scottish force led by Douglas and Moray. The chapter thus highlights once more Bruce’s skill as a commander and tactician, with the implied contrast with Edward II’s incompetence. It showed how yet another complete defeat and rout of the English army contributed to the ongoing political turmoil that beset the last years of Edward II’s reign, including the execution for treason of Andrew Harclay who had attempted to bring about peace between England and Scotland to relieve the continued suffering of the northern counties without the king’s approval.

Pearson is a skilled storyteller, and his narrative is well-constructed, flowing easily and logically from one point to the next. The text incorporates many excerpts from chronicle sources of both Scottish and English authorship (though the choice to use the outdated Maxwell edition of the Scalacronica is strange given the much more recent translation by Andy King),[2] John Barbour’s poem The Bruce, and other calendared administrative primary sources, which help to illustrate and support the book’s narrative. Unfortunately for those who would like a deeper dive into such sources, the notes are woefully incomplete, an issue which the publisher should have addressed. None of the citations for primary sources, which are clearly from edited and print sources, include page numbers – an error also noted for some of the citations for secondary sources – and, even worse, no volume number is provided for the multi-volumed calendared sources. There are two manuscript sources cited – one in the British Library (MS Stowe 553) and another at the National Archives (King’s Remembrancer rolls, E 179) – but again the citations are incomplete. The reference to MS Stowe 553 lacks the folio number; for a large wardrobe book comprising 155 folia, this is a significant oversight. Furthermore, the listing of the document as “Nova Taxatio, 1327, Public Records Office, E179” is incorrect and confusing; as there is no source called “Nova Taxatio” from 1327, and the full call number of the specific roll used, let alone the folio number, is missing, the specific source used by Pearson remains a mystery. As such, these notes are not very useful. Moreover, the narrative is based on a rather small group of secondary sources, which might account for its Scottish bias. Several of the sources listed in the “Select Bibliography” seemingly were not used, as they are not cited, including both recent biographies of Edward II. [3]

Sadly, despite the interesting images with which the book is filled, they are largely only tangentially helpful as they are nowhere referenced in the book’s text or directly described or engaged with; the reader must infer the relevance for themself. While many of the images therefore feel interesting but superfluous, a few of them are accompanied by useful explanatory captions that are immediately relevant to the narrative; these could easily have been incorporated into the main text rather leaving them as captions (71).

In general, the book would have benefitted from more careful and competent editing. Citation formatting seems especially to have been problematic, with areas where the text numbering does not align with the notes due to reusing or skipping numbers (92-3), and a rogue parenthetical citation (142) seems not to have been revised during the copyediting stage. In several places two separate notes – with correspondingly different note numbers – were used in the same spot in the text; the citation could easily have been condensed into a single note (38, 74). There were multiple typos as well. Yet, these critiques do not unduly detract from the value of Pearson’s book, which still provides a strong, albeit somewhat biased narrative of a largely ignored battle, situated within a turbulent history between England and Scotland in the late Middle Ages.

Ilana Krug
York College of Pennsylvania
[email protected]

[1] Michael Prestwich, Edward I, new edition (Yale University Press, 1997).

[2] Sir Thomas Gray, Scalacronia, ed. and trans. Andy King, Publications of the Surtees Society, v. 209 (Boydell, 2009).

[3] Roy Martin Haines, King Edward II: His Life, His Reign and its Aftermath, 1284-1330 (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003); Seymour Phillips, Edward II (Yale University Press, 2010).