On the 6th June,[60] Edward besieged and took the Castle of Edinburgh, in which he found the regalia, consisting of the crown, sceptre, and cloth of gold. On the 14th, he was at Stirling and Linlithgow. On the 24th July, he encamped on the banks of the Spey. He was at Elgin on the 26th, where he remained two days. He was at Aberbrothick on the 5th August, and again at Stirling on the 14th, at Edinburgh on the 17th, and at Berwick on the 22d, having spent twenty-one weeks in his progress of subjugation.[61] For the final settlement of his conquest, he appointed John, Earl of Warren, Lieutenant or Guardian of the kingdom; Hugh de Cressingham, an avaricious ecclesiastic, treasurer; William Ormsby, justiciary; Henry de Percy, keeper of the county of Galloway and sheriffdom of Ayr; while Robert de Clifford had charge of the eastern districts. The ancient Great Seal of Scotland, surrendered by Baliol at Brechin, was broken in pieces, and a new seal in place of it, was presented to Walter de Agmondesham, as chancellor.
The conduct of these ministers was ill calculated to secure the conquest which the policy and talents of their master had achieved. Haughty and rapacious themselves, they imposed little restraint on the licentious soldiery, who lorded it over the wretched inhabitants with the most intolerable brutality. While property of every description was held by the frail tenure of the will of the usurpers, outrages were committed on the domestic feelings of the oppressed, which the delicacy of modern writers have withdrawn from the page of history. Neither was this galling oppression confined to the common people; the cup of misery went round; and the noblest of the land partook of its unmingled bitterness. The unlimited exactions of Cressingham, and the little controul he exercised over his underlings, soon banished commerce from the Scottish shores. Deprived, by his impolitic proceedings, of this lucrative branch of the national resources, with whetted appetite for plunder, he turned upon the wretched and already impoverished inhabitants, who looked in vain to their nobles for that protection afforded them in times past. Those chieftains who would have stepped forward in their defence, had either fallen beneath the axe of the executioner, or were languishing out the prime of their existence in the distant dungeons of the invader.