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134 to the north with a large army, but that some exploit must be done on the Scots before his arrival. Two days later the King wrote again, urging, above all things, that the Bishops of Glasgow and St. Andrews should be captured, and that on no account were any terms to be offered them. The Bishop of Glasgow was taken at Cupar; and Edward wrote to de Valence from Margate expressing his delight, but charging him to secure Bishop de Lamberton, who, he was informed, was at the bottom of the whole mischief. Letters passed almost daily, sometimes more than one in a day, from the King to his "beau cosin," all of them betraying his burning impatience to be avenged on the rebels. Among others, Sir Michael de Wymes (Wemyss) was pointed out as especially obnoxious, and de Valence was commanded to burn, to destroy, and strip the lands of that knight and raze his house "where we lay," as the King had found neither good speech nor good service in him. The same, or "worse if possible," was to be done to the lands of Sir Gilbert de la Haye, to whom the King had done great courtesy when in London, but now found that he was a traitor.

An important letter was written on June 28th from Stoke Goldington, in which the King, referring to his previous orders to put to death all enemies and rebels already or hereafter taken, commanded de Valence, if he takes the Earl of Carrick, the Earl of Athol, or Sir Simon Fraser, to keep them in safe ward till his own pleasure should be known.

On June 5, 1306, the dread sentence of the greater excommunication was passed on Sir Robert de Brus