It is, no doubt, surprising that, after years of study, a writer should produce a work intended to constitute a standard authority on mediæval warfare, in which he has not even grasped so elementary a fact as the raising of English armies, in the 14th century, on geographical principles, and should consequently invent an imaginary host of nearly 30,000 men. Precisely as in 1314, the bulk of the foot for the Scottish expedition were raised from the Northern counties, so in 1345, for the contemplated French expedition, it was from the counties south of the Trent that the infantry (archers) was raised.[594] But it is even more surprising that he should substitute for this system a theory, based on the misquotation of his own figures alone, that, in 1339, we meet with a new system of summoning a comparatively small quota of picked men. It is but a further instance of his grievous lack of accuracy that on page 599 he renders the “homines armati”[595] summoned from the towns as “seventeen hundred archers,” although he prints from Rymer, a few pages earlier, the numbers of the foot summoned in 1339, of whom half are distinguished as archers and half as “armati.” One would have imagined that the fact of the host being drawn from the northern half of England alone would have been obvious from the dates. The orders from which Mr. Oman takes the numbers demanded were only issued from Newminster on May 27,[596] and ordered a rendezvous of the force at Wark (Northumberland) on June 10. The troops were to be there on that day “armis competentibus bene muniti, ac prompti et parati ad proficiscendum” to the immediate relief of Stirling. The time was desperately short, and haste was enjoined (“exasperes, festines”). Moreover, the English leaders were clearly not such fools as Mr. Oman imagines. The “orders” state that foot are wanted because the Scots nituntur, quantum possint, ... in locis fortibus et morosis (ubi equitibus difficilis patebit accessus) adinvicem congregare. Common sense tells one that 60,000 foot could not be manœuvred in such country, and would only prove an encumbrance. Edward, therefore, only summoned less than 22,000. As to his horse, Mr. Oman writes: if the English “had, as is said, three thousand _equites coperti_, men-at-arms on barded horses, the whole cavalry was probably ten thousand” (p. 575). But why? At Falkirk, sixteen years before, Edward I., he writes (p. 565), had the whole feudal levy of England at his back. He brought three thousand knights on barded horses, and four thousand other men-at-arms.