295 all this menyhe. According to the pay-sheet, August 1 to September 24, 8,080 men, apart, however, from the following of Lancaster (cf. on 285 and 852) and the sailors (Bain, iii., No. 668). In Annal. Paul. 30,000 horse! (p. 286).
298 Ordanit ane felde. The “Magdalen Fields” surrounding the town. “The army was spread ont, on the land side, round the circuit of the town” (Vita Edw. Sec., p. 242).
306 all the havyn wes stoppit. “On the side of the sea the sailors present from the Cinque Ports (Quinque Portubus) so watched the entries and exits that no one could possibly get out” (Vita Edw., p. 242).
318-9 sib him ner, Or ... his allye. “Either near relatives or those closely attached to him by some personal tie.” “Allye,” Fr. allié, is a trisyllable. It does not seem to signify, as Skeat suggests, allied “by various marriages,” but only the latter part of the phrase, “relatives and personal friends.”
335 our Ladeis evin. September 7, 1319. So Despenser, in his letter, says Edward came before Berwick on September 7, and “laid siege to the town, with all his host, by sea and by land” (par myer et par terre. Lanerc., p. 422). The English army entered Scotland on August 29 (Ann. Paul., p. 286).
343 coveryngis. Special protective dresses, such as the miner’s “basket” of wicker for those breaching the wall.
344 howis ... staff slyngis. The first were possibly picks on long poles, so resembling hoes, used for pulling down defences. The staff-sling consisted of a wooden shaft about a yard long, to one end of which was attached a sling. The slinger held it by the other end with both hands, and so could discharge a stone or bullet with great force.
359 ilk kyrneill. Each casement or open interval of the battlement. In the repairs of the castle in 1344 the portion of the wall renewed was to be 8 feet broad at “the kernels” (Bain, iii., No. 1434).
380 Sa law. Edward I. had begun to surround Berwick with a stone wall, but Hugh de Cressingham, his Treasurer (1297), had not spent on it the money given for its completion (Hemingburgh, ii., p. 127).