among the best land-owners of their counties.”  The king set out for the Continent; the Parliament met and considered the exigencies of the war by land and sea, in Scotland and in France; traders, ship-owners, and mariners were called and examined; and the forces determined to be necessary were voted.  Edward took the field, pillaging, burning, and ravaging, “destroying all the country for twelve or fourteen leagues to extent,” as he himself said in a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury.  When he set foot on French territory, Count William of Hainault, his brother-in-law, and up to that time his ally, came to him and said that “he would ride with him no farther, for that his presence was prayed and required by his uncle, the King of France to whom he bore no hate, and whom he would go and serve in his own kingdom, as he had served King Edward on the territory of the emperor, whose vicar he was; “and Edward wished him ‘God speed!’” Such was the binding nature of feudal ties that the same lord held himself bound to pass from one camp to another, according as he found himself upon the domains of one or the other of his suzerains in a war one against the other.  Edward continued his march towards St. Quentin, where Philip had at last arrived with his allies, the Kings of Bohemia, Navarre, and Scotland, “after delays which had given rise to great scandal and murmurs throughout the whole kingdom.”  The two armies, with a strength, according to Froissart, of a hundred thousand men on the French side, and forty-four thousand on the English, were soon facing one another, near Buironfosse, a large burgh of Picardy.  A herald came from the English camp to tell the King of France that the King of England “demanded of him battle.  To which demand,” says Froissart, “the King of France gave willing assent, and accepted the day, which was fixed at first for Thursday the 21st, and afterwards for Saturday the 25th of October, 1339.”  To judge from the somewhat tangled accounts of the chroniclers and of Froissart himself, neither of the two kings was very anxious to come to blows.  The forces of Edward were much inferior to those of Philip; and the former had accordingly taken up, as it appears, a position which rendered attack difficult for Philip.  There was much division of opinion in the French camp.  Independently of military grounds, a great deal was said about certain letters from Robert, King of Naples, “a mighty necromancer and full of mighty wisdom, it was reported, who, after having several times cast their horoscopes, had discovered by astrology and from experience, that, if his cousin, the King of France, were to fight the King of England, the former would be worsted.”  “In thus disputing and debating,” says Froissart, “the time passed till full midday.  A little afterwards a hare came leaping across the fields, and rushed amongst the French.  Those who saw it began shouting and making a great halloo.  Those who were behind thought that those who were in front were