David II invaded England in October 1346 while Edward III was at Calais and the English army was at Crecy. He was caught near Durham and his army destroyed. David was captured — wounded by two arrows — by a Yorkshire knight named John Copeland. He spent the next eleven years imprisoned in England while Scotland paid a vast ransom. The defeat showed that Scotland could not reliably exploit English military absence on the continent, and the ransom nearly crippled the Scottish crown for a generation.
Estimated 3,000-15,000 Scots killed; David II and many nobles captured
Aubrey generates in-depth historical research for any location in Britain — drawing on Domesday records, scheduled monuments, Victorian OS maps, geological data and archaeological archives to tell the full story of a place.
Research a location near County Durham