Hugh de Courtenay, 1st/9th Earl of Devon to surrender his absolute authority and ownership of what became community forests. In 1306, the Prince of Wales was despatched into Scotland; the vanguard was led by Aymer de Valence, the King's half-uncle. On 22 May, Courtenay was knighted by the Prince, presumably for his efforts against the Scots. In June, the English occupied Perth. On 19 June, Valence, who had cut a swathe through the Lowlands, fell on the Scots army at Methven in the early dawn. The Scottish king, Robert Bruce, fled into the hills. King Edward I was merciless, as many prisoners were punished. That autumn, the
Scots language mainly for geographical and cultural features, such as "ceilidh", "loch" and "clan". From the thirteenth century, the Early Scots language spread further into Scotland via the burghs, which were proto-urban institutions first established by King David I. In the fourteenth century Scotland, the growth in prestige of Early Scots and the complementary decline of French, made Scots the prestige dialect of most of eastern Scotland. By the sixteenth century Middle Scots had established orthographic and literary norms largely independent of those developing in England. From 1610 to the 1690s during the Plantation of Ulster some 200,000 Scots-speaking Lowlanders settled in