The barbarous forays in which the borderers under Earl Douglas were wasting Northumberland woke a general indignation; and a grant from the Parliament at York enabled Edward to march with a great army to the North.

But Bruce as of old declined an engagement till the wasted Lowlands starved the invaders into a ruinous retreat.

The failure forced England in the spring of 1323 to stoop to a truce for thirteen years, in the negotiation of which Bruce was suffered to take the royal title.

We see in this act of the Despensers the first of a series of such attempts by which minister after minister strove to free the Crown from the bondage under which the war-pressure laid it to the growing power of Parliament; but it ended, as these after attempts ended, only in the ruin of the counsellors who planned it.

The pride of the country had been roused by the struggle, and the humiliation of such a truce robbed the Crown of its temporary popularity.
It led the way to the sudden catastrophe which closed this disastrous reign.
[Sidenote: Isabella] In his struggle with the Scots Edward, like his father, had been hampered not only by internal divisions but by the harassing intervention of France.
The rising under Bruce had been backed by French aid as well as by a revival of the old quarrel over Guienne, and on the accession of Charles the Fourth in 1322 a demand of homage for Ponthieu and Gascony called Edward over sea.