of troubles with France.

The establishment of Robert Bruce on the Scottish throne had been
attended by a considerable disturbance of the territorial balance in
the northern kingdom. Many Scottish magnates, deprived of their lands
and driven into exile, had abodes in England, and all might well look
for the favour of the king in whose service they had been ruined. The
treaty of Northampton made no provision for their restoration, and
Edward showed himself disposed to uphold it. Their estates were in the
hands of their supplanters, the nobles who had gathered round the
throne of the Bruces. Thus it was that the exiles were cut off from all
hope of return, and saw their only possibility of restitution in the
break-up of the friendship of Edward and David. In like case were the
English magnates who still entertained hopes of making effective the
grants of Scottish estates which they had received from Edward I. and
Edward II. For both classes alike every fresh year of peace between the
realms decreased their chances of obtaining their desires. They failed
to persuade Edward to go to war with his brother-in-law and repudiate
formally the obligations imposed upon him by his mother and her
paramour. But the minority of King David had unloosed the spirits of
disorder in Scotland. Though the vigorous and capable regent, Sir
Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray, showed himself competent to stem the
tide of aristocratic reaction which swelled round the throne of his
infant cousin, he was one of the old generation of heroes that had
aided King Robert to gain his throne. Were he to die, or become
incapable of acting, there was no one who could supply his place. The
Disinherited--thus they styled themselves--were encouraged both by the
apathy of Edward III. and the weakness of Scotland to make a bold
stroke on their own behalf.

At the head of the disinherited was Edward Balliol, the son of the
deposed King John. Brought up in England, first under the care of his
cousin, Earl Warenne, and afterwards in the household of the
half-brothers of Edward II., Edward Balliol, who succeeded in 1315 to
the French estates on which his father spent his latter years, divided
his time between England and France. The forfeiture of his father still
kept him out of Barnard Castle and the other Balliol lands in England.
Young and warlike, poor and ambitious, with few lands and great
pretensions, he never formally abandoned either the lordship of
Galloway o