The blood-stained old wooden bridge across the Ure has long ceased to bear the traffic of the locality, and a handsome stone erection now replaces it. Harcla and Ward's old fighting ground, that bristled with sword and spear and deadly bill on the 16th of March, 1321, is now more prosaic soil, burdened with houses, timber, and coal-yards; and is partly cleft by a short canal, the property of the River Ure Navigation. When the river was embanked in 1792, the excavators at the Old Banks, below the bridge, discovered some presumed relics of the battle, consisting of many fragments of arms and armour. VIII.--BATTLE OF BYLAND ABBEY. A.D. 1322. After the tragedy of Earl Lancaster's revolt had been concluded by the wholesale executions of the barons and knights implicated in that misguided movement, the Scots, commanded by Randolph, Earl of Moray, invaded the Western marches, and ravaged the country in their customary barbarous style, slaying all who attempted resistance, and driving before them all the flocks and herds that their swift and well-organised cavalry could collect. What they could not carry away they burnt, returning to Scotland without having received a check in the field. Where they had passed, the summer sun gleamed brightly on ruined cots and devastated fields, and the English peasantry, inured to toil and suffering, gazed despairingly upon the ruin of the fruit of the soil, fostered by their hard labour, and by the sun and rain of the departed months. While the Scots were acting Edward of Cærnarvon was preparing to take the field. Referring to the English monarch's victory at Boroughbridge, Sir Walter Scott makes the following reflections:-- "This gleam of success on his arms, which had been sorely tarnished, seems to have filled Edward, who was of a sanguine and buoyant temperament, with dreams of conquest over all his enemies. As a king never stands more securely than on the ruins of a discovered and suppressed conspiracy, he wrote to the pope to give himself no further solicitude to procure a truce or peace with the Scots, since he had determined to bring them to reason by force." Edward spared no pains to ensure the success of the expedition into Scotland, and Parliament authorised military levies in the country to the extent of one man from every English hamlet and village, and a proportionate number from the towns and cities. Subsidies of money were largely granted, and enabled Edward to obtain supplies of arms and provisions from over seas, besides reinforcing his army with soldiers from Aquitaine.