Nor were the resources of England less formidable for nourishing and maintaining the war. The prosperity which had grown up with the equal laws of our Saxon ancestors, and which the tyranny of the early Norman kings had never completely extinguished, had revived and spread under the wise and beneficent reigns of Henry II and Edward I. The legislative wisdom of the last monarch had given to the English law greater improvements than it had ever received in any subsequent reigns, while his heroic valor had subdued the rebellious spirit of his barons and trained their united strength to submission to the throne. The acquisition of Wales had removed the only weak point of his wide dominion and added a cruel and savage race to the already formidable mass of his armies. The navy of England already ruled the seas, and was prepared to carry ravage and desolation over the wide and defenseless Scottish coast; while a hundred thousand men armed in the magnificent array of feudal war and led on by the ambition of a feudal nobility poured into a country which seemed destined only to be their prey. But, most of all, in the ranks of this army were found the intrepid yeomanry of England--that peculiar and valuable body of men which has in every age contributed as much to the stability of English character as the celebrity of the English arms, and which then composed those terrible archers whose prowess rendered them so formidable to all the armies of Europe. These men, whose valor was warmed by the consciousness of personal freedom and whose strength was nursed among the inclosed fields and green pastures of English liberty, conferred, till the discovery of firearms rendered personal accomplishments of no avail, a matchless advantage on the English armies. The troops of no other nation could produce a body of men in the least comparable to them, either in strength, discipline, or individual valor; and such was the dreadful efficacy with which they used their weapons that not only did they mainly contribute to the subsequent triumphs of Cressy and Azincourt, but at Poitiers and Hamildon Hill they alone gained the victory, with hardly any assistance from the feudal tenantry. These troops were well known to the Scottish soldiers, and had established their superiority over them in many bloody battles, in which the utmost efforts of undisciplined valor had been found unavailing against their practiced discipline and superior equipment. The very names of the barons who headed them were associated with an unbroken career of conquest and renown, and can hardly be read yet without a feeling of exultation. Names that to fear were never known, Bold Norfolk’s Earl de Brotherton And Oxford’s famed De Vere; Ross, Montague, and Manly came, And Courtney’s pride and Percy’s fame, Names known too well in Scotland’s war At Falkirk, Methoven, and Dunbar, Blazed broader yet in after years At Cressy red and fell Poitiers.