l with Earl Henry of Lancaster at
its head. The Council had at once to meet fresh difficulties in the North.
The truce so recently made ceased legally with Edward's deposition; and the
withdrawal of his royal title in further offers of peace warned Bruce of
the new temper of the English rulers. Troops gathered on either side, and
the English Council sought to pave the way for an attack by dividing
Scotland against itself. Edward Balliol, a son of the former king John, was
solemnly received as a vassal-king of Scotland at the English court. Robert
was disabled by leprosy from taking the field in person, but the insult
roused him to hurl his marauders again over the border under Douglas and
Sir Thomas Randolph. The Scotch army has been painted for us by an
eye-witness whose description is embodied in the work of Jehan le Bel. "It
consisted of four thousand men-at-arms, knights, and esquires, well
mounted, besides twenty thousand men bold and hardy, armed after the manner
of their country, and mounted upon little hackneys that are never tied up
or dressed, but turned immediately after the day's march to pasture on the
heath or in the fields.... They bring no carriages with them on account of
the mountains they have to pass in Northumberland, neither do they carry
with them any provisions of bread or wine, for their habits of sobriety are
such in time of war that they will live for a long time on flesh
half-sodden without bread, and drink the river water without wine. They
have therefore no occasion for pots or pans, for they dress the flesh of
the cattle in their skins after they have flayed them, and being sure to
find plenty of them in the country which they invade they carry none with
them. Under the flaps of his saddle each man carries a broad piece of
metal, behind him a little bag of oatmeal: when they have eaten too much of
the sodden flesh and their stomach appears weak and empty, they set this
plate over the fire, knead the meal with water, and when the plate is hot
put a little of the paste upon it in a thin cake like a biscuit, which they
eat to warm their stomachs. It is therefore no wonder that they perform a
longer day's march than other soldiers." Though twenty thousand horsemen
and forty thousand foot marched under their boy-king to protect the border,
the English troops were utterly helpless against such a foe as this. At one
time the whole army lost its way in the border wastes: at another all
traces of the