s that Baliol,
and such of the competitors as adhered to him should choose forty
commissioners; Bruce and his adherents forty more: to these the
king added twenty-four Englishmen: he ordered these hundred and four
commissioners to examine the cause deliberately among themselves, and
make their report to him:[*] and he promised in the ensuing year to give
his determination. Meanwhile he pretended that it was requisite to have
all the fortresses of Scotland delivered into his hands, in order to
enable him, without opposition, to put the true heir in possession of
the crown; and this exorbitant demand was complied with, both by the
states and by the claimants.[**] The governors also of all the castles
immediately resigned their command; except Umfreville, earl of Angus,
who refused, without a formal and particular acquittal from the
parliament and the several claimants, to surrender his fortresses to so
domineering an arbiter, who had given to Scotland so many just reasons
of suspicion.[***] Before this assembly broke up, which had fixed such
a mark of dishonor on the nation, all the prelates and barons there
present swore fealty to Edward; and that prince appointed commissioners
to receive a like oath from all the other barons and persons of
distinction in Scotland.[****]

* Rymer, vol. ii. p. 555, 556.

** Rymer, vol. ii. p. 529. Walsing. p. 56, 57.

*** Rymer, vol. ii. p. 531.

**** Rymer, vol. ii p. 573.

The king, having finally made, as he imagined, this important
acquisition, left the commissioners to sit at Berwick, and examine the
titles of the several competitors who claimed the precarious crown,
which Edward was willing for some time to allow the lawful heir to
enjoy. He went southwards, both in order to assist at the funeral of
his mother, Queen Eleanor, who died about this time, and to compose some
differences which had arisen among his principal nobility. Gilbert, earl
of Glocester, the greatest baron of the kingdom, had espoused the king's
daughter; and being elated by that alliance, and still more by his
own power, which, he thought, set him above the laws, he permitted his
bailiffs and vassals to commit violence on the lands of Humphrey Bohun,
earl of Hereford, who retaliated the injury by like violence. But
this was not a reign in which such illegal proceedings could pass with
impunity. Edward procured a sentence against the two earls, committed
them both to prison, and would not