to the English peerage when the king’s little son, Earl of Chester in 1333, was made Duke of Cornwall in 1337.  The old feuds seemed dead and with them the old disorder.  But Edward was ambitious of military glory, and it was natural that he should seek to reverse the degrading part which he had been forced to play in relation to Scotland and France.  His hands being tied by treaties, it was not easy for him to make the first move.  Before long, however, circumstances arose which gave him a chance of taking up a line of his own with regard to Scotland.  From that time Scottish affairs mainly absorbed his attention until the outbreak of troubles with France.

The establishment of Robert Bruce on the Scottish throne had been attended by a considerable disturbance of the territorial balance in the northern kingdom.  Many Scottish magnates, deprived of their lands and driven into exile, had abodes in England, and all might well look for the favour of the king in whose service they had been ruined.  The treaty of Northampton made no provision for their restoration, and Edward showed himself disposed to uphold it.  Their estates were in the hands of their supplanters, the nobles who had gathered round the throne of the Bruces.  Thus it was that the exiles were cut off from all hope of return, and saw their only possibility of restitution in the break-up of the friendship of Edward and David.  In like case were the English magnates who still entertained hopes of making effective the grants of Scottish estates which they had received from Edward I. and Edward II.  For both classes alike every fresh year of peace between the realms decreased their chances of obtaining their desires.  They failed to persuade Edward to go to war with his brother-in-law and repudiate formally the obligations imposed upon him by his mother and her paramour.  But the minority of King David had unloosed the spirits of disorder in Scotland.  Though the vigorous and capable regent, Sir Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray, showed himself competent to stem the tide of aristocratic reaction which swelled round the throne of his infant cousin, he was one of the old generation of heroes that had aided King Robert to gain his throne.  Were he to die, or become incapable of acting, there was no one who could supply his place.  The Disinherited—­thus they styled themselves—­were encouraged both by the apathy of Edward III. and the weakness of Scotland to make a bold stroke on their own behalf.

At the head of the disinherited was Edward Balliol, the son of the deposed King John.  Brought up in England, first under the care of his cousin, Earl Warenne, and afterwards in the household of the half-brothers of Edward II., Edward Balliol, who succeeded in 1315 to the French estates on which his father spent his latter years, divided his time between England and France.  The forfeiture of his father still kept him out of Barnard Castle and the other Balliol lands in England.  Young and warlike, poor and ambitious,