r the throne of Scotland. In 1330 he received permission to
take up his quarters in England during pleasure. He soon associated
himself with his fellow-exiles in a bold attempt to win back their
patrimony. Chief among his followers were three titular Scottish earls,
closely related by intermarriage, each of whom was also a baron of high
rank in England. Of these the French-born Henry of Beaumont, kinsman of
Eleanor of Castile, and brother of Bishop Louis of Durham, was the
oldest and most experienced. As the husband of a sister of the last of
the Comyn Earls of Buchan, he posed as the heir of the greatest of the
Scottish houses which had paid the penalty of its opposition to King
Robert, and was summoned to the English parliament as Earl of Buchan.
Beaumont's great-nephew, the young Gilbert of Umfraville, lord of
Redesdale, was a grandson of another Comyn heiress, and his ancestors
had inherited in the middle of the thirteenth century the ancient
Scottish earldom of Angus, though they also had incurred forfeiture for
their adhesion to the English policy. David of Strathbolgie, Earl of
Athol, had a better right to be called a Scot than Umfraville or
Beaumont. But his father abandoned Bruce, and was driven into England,
where he held the Kentish barony of Chilham, and sat in the English
parliament under his Scottish title. The younger Athol was son-in-law
to the titular Earl of Moray, and all three kinsmen were bound by
common interests to embrace the policy of Edward Balliol. Many lesser
men associated themselves with the three earls and the claimant to a
throne. Nearly every nobleman of the Scottish border made himself a
party to a scheme of adventure which had its best parallels in the
Norman invasions of Wales and Ireland.

The object of the disinherited was to raise an army and prosecute their
Scottish claims by force. Edward III. gave them no open countenance,
and took up an ostentatiously correct attitude. He solemnly forbade all
breach of the peace, and prevented the adventurers from adopting the
easy course of marching from England to an open attack on Scotland. No
obstacles, however, were imposed to hinder their raising a small but
efficient army of 500 men-at-arms and 1,000 archers. Mercenaries, both
English and foreign, were hired to supplement their scanty numbers, and
among those who took service with them was a young gentleman of
Hainault, Walter Manny, whose father had a few years before perished in
the se