The mother of a son, the child hight Thomas;
And when the king heard say she had so well faren,
Thither he went away, to see her and her bairn.
The queen, with her son, at Cawood leaves he;
To them, on the Ouse, full often came he.”
A month or two was given to this marriage; but Edward soon remembered that Scotland would need his attention. The seven months’ truce claimed for Scotland by Philip would soon expire; and the king had friends in Scotland who needed his aid. He summoned, accordingly, his military tenants to meet him in York on the 10th of November. But when this meeting took place, the king found that his barons disliked the idea of a northern campaign in November and December, and their objections prevailed. The king postponed any active movements in Scotland until the coming spring.
Early in the following year, 1300, the king again met his parliament in Westminster. A new and extensive Statute on the Charters was here proposed and adopted. It enacted that the charters should be published by the sheriffs of all counties four times in each year. It ordained that “no prises” should be taken within the realm, save only the king’s takers or purveyors; and that these should be bound to exhibit the king’s warrant, and to pay or make agreement with those from whom the things were taken. It also made other good and desirable regulations, all tending to give greater security to property, against violence or illegal conduct on the part of men in office. In this parliament, as well as previously in that of 1299, urgent demands were made for a new perambulation of the forests; and the king promised to take measures for the accomplishment of that object; which promise he faithfully kept.
And now, as the spring advanced, the king prepared for another march into Scotland; reaching the border, this year, at an earlier period of the summer than on most of his former expeditions. The Scotch had now learnt the simple and generally effectual device of retiring on the approach of the English army without offering battle. Edward besieged and took Lochmaben Castle, and then proceeded to Caerlaverock, on the Solway‐Frith. This castle also capitulated on the second day. An account of this brief siege, in Norman‐French, from the pen of an eye‐witness, is among the Cotton MSS. in the British Museum. It is supposed by Sir Harris Nicholas to be the work of Walter of Exeter, a Franciscan friar, who is believed to have written the history of Guy, earl of Warwick, in 1292. The garrison, he tells us, threw themselves on the king’s mercy. “They were kept and guarded till the king commanded that life and limb should be given them; and also ordered that each of them should have a new garment.”