As the general information which appeared necessary to illustrate the two principal subjects of MINOT's poetry-his hero's wars with Scotland and with France-was thought too long for the notes, it has been thrown into the form of DISSERTATIONS. This, however, being an afterthought, has occasioned some repetitions, which the reader is desired to pardon.

No word of the least difficulty has been intentionally omitted in the GLOSSARY; though many words, peculiar to our author, are necessarily submitted to farther investigation; as it seems no part of an editor's duty to save his readers the trouble of guessing at the meaning of expressions for which they cannot possibly be more at a loss than he is himself.

INTRODUCTORY

DISSERTATIONS.

I.

ON THE SCOTISH WARS OF KING EDWARD III.

THE male line of the royal family of Scotland having become extinct by the death of Alexander III. in the year 1285-6, and the young queen Margaret of Norway, his grand-daughter, the only surviving descendant of Henry, prince of Cumberland, eldest son of David I. dying an infant, in 1290, several persons, in different rights, laid claim to the crown; and the regency of Scotland, either unable or unwilling to decide

the contest, solicited the assistance of king Edward I. This monarch, powerful, ambitious, and politic, readily accepted the office of arbitrator; but, previously to a decision upon the claims of others, he thought it necessary to determine a claim of his own, which was, to be superior and lord paramount of the kingdom of Scotland: a claim which the competitors, whether through ignorance, timidity, or prudence, unanimously acknowledged; and, in that character, they obliged themselves, by a solemn instrument, to sbumit to his award; the regency and baronage of Scotland, at the same time, not only surrendering the kingdom, but doing homage and swearing fealty, as to their liege lord, in order to enable him, as he pretended, to carry it the more effectually into execution. This meeting was held, by adjournment, at a small village on the north side of the Tweed, opposite to the castle of Norham, in the beginning of June, 1291, and was further adjourned to the second of August, in the

same year; when the claims were to be received by commissioners named for the purpose, who were to report the result to Edward. The competitors, accordingly, at this adjourned meeting, delivered in their claims, which amounted to thirteen but, most of them being very frivolous, they were, by different means, finally reduced to two: those of John de Baliol and Robert de Brus, or Bruce, both powerful barons, as well in England as in Scotland; Baliol being the grandson of Margaret, the eldest daughter of David earl of Huntingdon, second son of David I. and Bruce the son of Isabel, the second daughter of the same nobleman. The sole question, therefore, left to the decision of Edward, was whether the issue of an elder sister, more remote in one degree, was to be preferred to the issue of a younger sister, nearer in one degree; and his definitive judgment was, that Baliol should have seisin of the kingdom of Scotland, saving the right of the king of England and his heirs. Seisin being

accordingly delivered, Baliol was crowned at Scone, on the 30th of November, 1292, and on the 26th of the following month did homage to his liege lord, at Newcastle upon Tyne. This adjudication of the English monarch, however unsatisfactory in its consequences, was self-evidently just; and supposing, with the learned and ingenious Ruddiman, the Scots of that period to have thought otherwise, namely, that the child of a younger daughter was to be preferred, in an indivisible inheritance, to the grandchild of an elder, they must certainly have been very confused and inconsequential reasoners.

In the year 1295, Baliol, who had been repeatedly cited before the English parliament, on the complaint of his own subjects, and seems, in short, to have had his patience completely, and perhaps intentionally, wearied out by the domineering insolence of his lord paramount, entered into an alliance with Philip the Fair, king of France, and committed some petty devestation