England who had been at the conference at Bolinghen, had not acted very honourably when they had consented to order their men to march to Scotland and burn the country, knowing that a truce would speedily be concluded: and the best excuse they could make was, that it was the French and not they who were to signify such truce to the Scots.” Smarting from this inroad, the Scots lords, and especially the Douglases and others on the border, were in no humour to coincide with their peaceful King. They desired to talk the matter over with the representatives of the adventurers in some quiet place; and, for reasons which were doubtless sufficient to themselves, they selected for this purpose the church of St Giles in Edinburgh. The conference was highly satisfactory to the adventurers, who spurred back to Perth to impart the secret intelligence that though the king had accepted the truce, the lords were no party to it, but would immediately prepare an expedition to avenge Nottingham and Northumberland’s raid. This was joyful intelligence, though in its character rather surprising to followers of the French court. A force was rapidly collected, and in a very few days the adventurers were called to join it in the Douglases’ lands. So far Froissart. This affair is not, at least to our knowledge, mentioned in detail by any of our own annalists writing before the publication of his Chronicles. Everything, however, is there set forth so minutely, and with so distinct and accurate a reference to actual conditions in all the details, that few things in history can be less open to doubt. Here, however, we come to a statement inviting question, when he says that the force collected so suddenly by the Scots lords contained fifteen thousand mounted men; nor can we be quite reconciled to the statement though their steeds were the small mountain horses called hackneys. The force, however, was sufficient for its work. It found the English border trusting to the truce, and as little prepared for invasion as Nottingham and Northumberland had found Scotland. The first object was the land of the Percies, which the Scots, in the laconic language of the chronicler, “pillaged and burnt.” And so they went onwards; and where peasants had been peacefully tilling the land or tending their cattle amid the comforts of rude industry, there the desolating host passed, the crops were trampled down—their owners left dead in the ashes of their smoking huts—and a few widows and children, fleeing for safety and food, was all of animal life left upon the scene. The part, indeed, taken in it by his countrymen was exactly after Froissart’s own heart, since they were not carrying out any of the political movements of the day, nor were they even actuated by an ambition of conquest, but were led by the sheer fun of the thing and the knightly spirit of adventure to partake in this wild raid. To the Scots it was a substantial affair, for they came back heavy-handed, with