On 17 March (my birthday, as it goes) 1298, soon after his return from Flanders, Edward I sent a letter to Earl Warenne. He thanked the earl for his services in the north while Edward was abroad, and asked him to continue fighting the good fight until the king could join him.
In truth, Earl Warenne had made a ghastly cock of everything. The previous September he was thrashed at Stirling Bridge by William Wallace and Andrew Murray, and then fled south to York after the king had explicitly ordered him to stay in Scotland. Warenne, a perfectly adequate military commander before and after the time of Stirling Bridge, appears to have been taking incompetence pills. Over the winter of 1297-8 he did manage to break the siege of Roxburgh and recapture Berwick, but even these limited successes were owed to others.
Robert, the lord of Warkworth, along with John Fitz Marmaduke, gathered their levies and rode quickly at night to ambush the Scottish army outside Roxburgh. They slaughtered the crewmen handling the Scottish siege engines and then drove off the rest of the Scots. This was the sort of feat the Black Douglas would later specialise in, but on this occasion it was the English who stole a march. After hearing of this reverse, Henry de Haliburton abandoned Berwick and withdrew into Scotland.
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