r
army, on no account to run the hazard of a battle.

The king of England's incursion from Calais was of the samme nature,
and attended with the same issue. He broke into France at the head of
a numerous army; to which he gave a full license of plundering and
ravaging the open country. He advanced to St. Omer, where the king of
France was posted; and on the retreat of that prince, followed him to
Hesdin.[**] John still kept at a distance, and declined an engagement:
but in order to save his reputation, he sent Edward a challenge to fight
a pitched battle with him; a usual bravado in that age, derived from the
practice of single combat, and ridiculous in the art of war. The king,
finding no sincerity in this defiance, retired to Calais, and thence
went over to England, in order to defend that kingdom against a
threatened invasion of the Scots.

The Scots, taking advantage of the king's absence, and that of the
military power of England, had surprised Berwick; and had collected an
army with a view of committing ravages upon the northern provinces:
but on the approach of Edward, they abandoned that place, which was not
tenable, while the castle was in the hands of the English; and
retiring to their mountains, gave the enemy full liberty of burning and
destroying the whole country from Berwick to Edinburgh.[***]

* Froissard, liv. i. chap. 144, 146.

** Froissard, liv. i. chap. 144. Avesbury, p. 206. Walsing.
p. 171.

*** Walsing. p. 171.

Baliol attended Edward on this expedition; but finding that his constant
adherence to the English had given his countrymen an unconquerable
aversion to his title, and that he himself was declining through age and
infirmities, he finally resigned into the king's hands his pretensions
to the crown of Scotland,[*] and received in lieu of them an annual
pension of two thousand pounds, with which he passed the remainder of
his life in privacy and retirement.

During these military operations, Edward received information of the
increasing disorders in France, arising from the imprisonment of the
king of Navarre; and he sent Lancaster at the head of a small army, to
support the partisans of that prince in Normandy. The war was conducted
with various success, but chiefly to the disadvantage of the French
malecontents; till an important event happened in the other quarter of
the kingdom, which had well nigh proved fatal to the monarchy of France,
and threw every thing