Robert Bruce continued to reign gloriously for several years, and was so constantly victorious over the English, that the Scots seemed during his government to have acquired a complete superiority over their neighbors. But then we must remember that Edward the Second, who then reigned in England, was a foolish prince, and listened to bad counsels; so that it is no wonder that he was beaten by so wise and experienced a general as Robert Bruce, who had fought his way to the crown through so many disasters, and acquired in consequence so much renown, that, as I have often said, he was generally accounted one of the best soldiers and wisest sovereigns of his time. In the last year of Robert the Bruce’s reign, he became extremely sickly and infirm, chiefly owing to a disorder called the leprosy, which he had caught during the hardships and misfortunes of his youth, when he was so frequently obliged to hide himself in woods and morasses, without a roof to shelter him. While Bruce was in this feeble state, Edward the Second, King of England, died, and was succeeded by his son Edward the Third. He turned out afterwards to be one of the wisest and bravest kings whom England ever had; but when he first mounted the throne he was very young, and under the entire management of his mother. The war between the English and the Scots still lasting at the time, Bruce sent his two great commanders, the good Lord James Douglas, and Thomas Randolph, Earl of Murray, to lay waste the counties of Northumberland and Durham, and distress the English as much as they could. Their soldiers were about twenty thousand in number, all lightly armed, and mounted on horses that were quite small in height, but excessively active. The men themselves carried no provision, except a bag of oatmeal; and each had at his saddle a small plate of iron called a girdle, on which, when they pleased, they could bake the oatmeal into cakes. They killed the cattle of the English, as they traveled through the country, roasted the flesh on wooden spits, or boiled it in the skins of the animals themselves, putting in a little water with the beef, to prevent the fire from burning the hide to pieces. This was rough cookery. They made their shoes, or rather sandals, in as coarse a way; cutting them out of the raw hides of the cattle, and fitting them to their ankles, like what are now called short gaiters. As this sort of buskin had the hairy side of the hide outermost, the English called those who wore them _rough-footed_ Scots, and sometimes, from the color of the hide, _red-shanks_.