according to our ideas, was just; no modern court could set it aside. But
Balliol was an unpopular weakling--"an empty tabard," the people said--and
Edward at once subjected him, king as he was, to all the humiliations of
a petty vassal. He was summoned into his Lord's Court on the score of
the bills of tradesmen. If Edward's deliberate policy was to goad
Balliol into resistance and then conquer Scotland absolutely, in the
first of these aims he succeeded.

In 1294 Balliol was summoned, with his Peers, to attend Edward in
Gascony. Balliol, by advice of a council (1295), sought a French
alliance and a French marriage for his son, named Edward; he gave the
Annandale lands of his enemy Robert Bruce (father of the king to be) to
Comyn, Earl of Buchan. He besieged Carlisle, while Edward took Berwick,
massacred the people, and captured Sir William Douglas, father of the
good Lord James.

In the war which followed, Edward broke down resistance by a sanguinary
victory at Dunbar, captured John Comyn of Badenoch (the Red Comyn),
received from Balliol (July 7, 1296) the surrender of his royal claims,
and took the oaths of the Steward of Scotland and the Bruces, father and
son. He carried to Westminster the Black Rood of St Margaret and the
famous stone of Scone, a relic of the early Irish dynasty of the Scots;
as far north as Elgin he rode, receiving the oaths of all persons of note
and influence--except William Wallace. _His_ name does not appear in the
list of submissions called "The Ragman's Roll." Between April and
October 1296 the country was subjugated; the castles were garrisoned by
Englishmen. But by January 1297, Edward's governor, Warenne, Earl of
Surrey, and Ormsby, his Chief Justice, found the country in an uproar,
and at midsummer 1297 the levies of the northern counties of England were
ordered to put down the disorders.