with few lands and great pretensions, he never formally abandoned either the lordship of Galloway or the throne of Scotland.  In 1330 he received permission to take up his quarters in England during pleasure.  He soon associated himself with his fellow-exiles in a bold attempt to win back their patrimony.  Chief among his followers were three titular Scottish earls, closely related by intermarriage, each of whom was also a baron of high rank in England.  Of these the French-born Henry of Beaumont, kinsman of Eleanor of Castile, and brother of Bishop Louis of Durham, was the oldest and most experienced.  As the husband of a sister of the last of the Comyn Earls of Buchan, he posed as the heir of the greatest of the Scottish houses which had paid the penalty of its opposition to King Robert, and was summoned to the English parliament as Earl of Buchan.  Beaumont’s great-nephew, the young Gilbert of Umfraville, lord of Redesdale, was a grandson of another Comyn heiress, and his ancestors had inherited in the middle of the thirteenth century the ancient Scottish earldom of Angus, though they also had incurred forfeiture for their adhesion to the English policy.  David of Strathbolgie, Earl of Athol, had a better right to be called a Scot than Umfraville or Beaumont.  But his father abandoned Bruce, and was driven into England, where he held the Kentish barony of Chilham, and sat in the English parliament under his Scottish title.  The younger Athol was son-in-law to the titular Earl of Moray, and all three kinsmen were bound by common interests to embrace the policy of Edward Balliol.  Many lesser men associated themselves with the three earls and the claimant to a throne.  Nearly every nobleman of the Scottish border made himself a party to a scheme of adventure which had its best parallels in the Norman invasions of Wales and Ireland.

The object of the disinherited was to raise an army and prosecute their Scottish claims by force.  Edward III. gave them no open countenance, and took up an ostentatiously correct attitude.  He solemnly forbade all breach of the peace, and prevented the adventurers from adopting the easy course of marching from England to an open attack on Scotland.  No obstacles, however, were imposed to hinder their raising a small but efficient army of 500 men-at-arms and 1,000 archers.  Mercenaries, both English and foreign, were hired to supplement their scanty numbers, and among those who took service with them was a young gentleman of Hainault, Walter Manny, whose father had a few years before perished in the service of Edward II. in Gascony, and who had first come to England in the service of his countrywoman, Queen Philippa.  Ships were collected in the Humber, and on the last day of July, 1332, the disinherited and their followers sailed from Ravenspur on a destination which was officially supposed to be unknown.  A week later, on August 6, they landed at Kinghorn in Fife.