Page:Robert the Bruce and the struggle for Scottish independence - 1909.djvu/378

318 and for which so large a price had to be paid, were obliged to buy remounts at York, for their warhorses had foundered or died under the severities of a few weeks in the open.

Attempts have been made by some of the English chroniclers to account for the failure of Edward III.'s first campaign by making a charge of treachery against Mortimer, whom they accuse of having taken a bribe of £20,000 to let the Scots escape; but, as Lord Hailes points out, this, had it been true, certainly would have formed one of the counts in the subsequent indictment of Mortimer. He was, indeed, charged on his trial with having embezzled money paid by the Scots, but that was a sum stipulated for under the treaty of 1328, the year following the campaign of Weardale. Froissart would have been sure to hear, and equally sure to make mention, of any underhand transactions between Mortimer and Moray; but he never hints at any cause for the failure of the English at Stanhope, except that they were fairly outgeneralled.

During the autumn of 1327 one of the few Scottish barons who remained in the English interest went to his rest, namely Sir Dougall Macdouall of Galloway. He had petitioned Edward II. for the grant of certain lands in Ireland, to compensate him for those he had lost in Scotland, and was told in reply to go and serve the King in Ireland and he would be rewarded according to his "bon port." He went there, accordingly, in 1316, with his