Froissart commences the XXVIth Chapter of his first Book as follows, “You have heard related all that passed between the English and Scotch, during the three years that the truce lasted:--and for one year more the two nations were at peace. This had not happened before for two hundred years, during which they had been constantly at war with each other. It fell out that king Edward was informed that the young king David of Scotland, who had married his sister, kept possession of Berwick, which of right belonged to his kingdom, and which king Edward his ancestor had held, and the king his father also, very peaceably for a long time afterwards. He was also informed, that the kingdom of Scotland was dependant on his crown as a fief, and that the young king of Scots, his brother-in-law, had never acknowledged it, or done homage for it. The king of England therefore sent ambassadors to the king of Scots, to request that he would withdraw his people from the city of Berwick and give him possession of it, as it was his just inheritance, and had always appertained to the kings of England his predecessors. They also summoned him to come and do his homage for the kingdom of Scotland, which he ought to hold from the crown of England as a fief----” The answers of the King of Scotland, a youth of fifteen, being unsatisfactory, it was determined, on the meeting of Parliament, that the King should lead a powerful army into Scotland: an invasion consequently took place, the King passed Berwick, penetrating as far as Dunbarton, and laying waste the country in every direction,--then making a “handsome retreat,” as our Chronicler describes it, he came before Berwick, which, after an obstinate resistance, was compelled to surrender. “The king,” continues Froissart, “made his public entry into Berwick with great pomp and sounding of trumpets, and tarried there twelve days. He appointed as governor thereof a knight called Sir Edward Baliol, with whom he left, when he quitted Berwick, many young knights and esquires, to assist him in keeping the conquests he had made from the Scots, and to guard the frontiers. The king and all his people then returned towards London, and gave full liberty for every man to go to his own home. He himself went to Windsor, where he chiefly resided.” The Illumination is in the same style as the surrender of Bristol, exhibiting great care in the landscape, to the picturesque features of which the artist seems to have paid peculiar attention. His castles, for instance, are never represented as new, as in many other MSS. is always the case; but the weather stains are introduced with clever and pleasing tinting, and the parasitic weeds or climbing plants, the tenants of old walls, are made to minister to the general picturesqueness of the composition, each in its proper situation, with almost the skill of a modern landscape painter. [Illustration: <f>Bristol surrenders to Queen Isabella &c&c.</f>] PLATE VI.