moved for
the marriage of the infant queen to his son. A Treaty safeguarding all
Scottish liberties as against England was made by clerical influences at
Birgham (July 18, 1290), but by October 7 news of the death of the young
queen reached Scotland: she had perished during her voyage from Norway.
Private war now broke out between the Bruces and Balliols; and the party
of Balliol appealed to Edward, through Fraser, Bishop of St Andrews,
asking the English king to prevent civil war, and recommending Balliol as
a person to be carefully treated. Next the Seven Earls, alleging some
dim elective right, recommended Bruce, and appealed to Edward as their
legal superior.

Edward came to Norham-on-Tweed in May 1291, proclaimed himself Lord
Paramount, and was accepted as such by the twelve candidates for the
Crown (June 3). The great nobles thus, to serve their ambitions,
betrayed their country: _the communitas_ (whatever that term may here
mean) made a futile protest.

As lord among his vassals, Edward heard the pleadings and evidence in
autumn 1292; and out of the descendants, in the female line, of David
Earl of Huntingdon, youngest son of David I., he finally (November 17,
1292) preferred John Balliol (_great-grandson_ of the earl through his
eldest daughter) to Bruce the Old, grandfather of the famous Robert
Bruce, and _grandson_ of Earl David's second daughter. The decision,
according to our ideas, was just; no modern court could set it aside. But
Balliol was an unpopular weakling--"an empty tabard," the people said--and
Edward at once subjected him, king as he was, to all the humiliations of
a petty vassal. He was summoned into his Lord's Court on the score of
the bills of tradesmen. If Edward's deliberate policy was to goad
Balliol into resistance and then conquer Scotland absolutely, in the
first of these aims he succeeded.

In 1294 Balliol was summoned, with his Peers, to attend Edward in
Gascony. Balliol, by advice of a council (1295), sought a French
alliance and a French marriage for his son, named Edward; he gave the
Annandale lands of his enemy Robert Bruce (father of the king to be) to
Comyn, Earl of Buchan. He besieged Carlisle, while Edward took Berwick,
massacred the people, and captured Sir William Douglas, father of the
good Lord James.

In the war which followed, Edward broke down resistance by a sanguinary
victory at Dunbar, captured John Comyn of Badenoch (the Red Comyn),
received from Ballio