Douglas of Liddesdale kept up a campaign of harassment against the king, while Murray destroyed Dunnottar, Kinneff and Lauriston in order to prevent Edward III using them to his own advantage. Famine and disease exacted harsh tolls throughout Scotland. In England, though French naval attacks were dying down, French political and legal pressures were increasing. Edward III again returned to England in December 1336 and began to plan a force to enter Gascony in the spring. The Scottish loyalists pressed the advantage of Edward III's distraction. Murray and Douglas of Liddesdale made incursions into the English strongholds of Perth and Fife and met no real resistance. Shortly thereafter, they negotiated terms with the troops garrisoned at Bothwell Castle, immediately afterward destroying the English fortifications. This was only the start. By the end of March, the Scottish troops had reclaimed most of Scotland north of the Forth and done serious damage to the lands of Edward Balliol. Edward III continued to focus on France, though he made clear his intentions of addressing Scotland when time permitted. But at the same time that Edward III was considering how best to deal with the French, the French were continuing to pour supplies into Scotland, and as the year progressed the Scottish forces began to encroach even into northern England, laying waste to Cumberland. Such actions forced Edward III to take the Scottish threat seriously, and in October he sent William Montagu, 1st Earl of Salisbury, to Scotland to see what he could do to contain the situation. Salisbury proved able to do little. He took his forces to Dunbar, launching an attack in January 1338 against its Countess, "Black Agnes" Randolph, the daughter of the former regent Thomas Randolph and the wife of one Patrick de Dunbar, 9th Earl of March. With the aid of Alexander Ramsay of Dalhousie, she withstood, and Salisbury withdrew on Edward III's command after six months of effort in June. Salisbury would, however, feature in the Second War again in 1341 when, as a prisoner of the French, his return to the English would be a bargaining point for the release of the Scottish John Randolph. While not to say that Scottish victory was imminently on the horizon, the early winter and spring of 1338 were a turning point for the Scottish campaign. Murray in particular was ruthless, and while suffering his own defeats left such destruction in his wake that thousands of Scottish civilians were left without food to sustain themselves, much less to fuel Balliol's cause.