under the orders of John de Perbroun, admiral of the north, and their appointed rendezvous was Yarmouth on May 18th.[1] Waresius de Valoignes was made admiral of the other, or western fleet, which included the squadron of the Cinque Ports; and he was charged to proceed with it to Skinburness.[2] The campaign ended on March 1st, 1328, in an inglorious peace, whereby the independence of Scotland was recognised, and Joanna, a daughter of Edward II., was promised in marriage to Robert's son David.
Philip VI., who succeeded to the French crown in 1328, lost little time in summoning Edward to do homage for his Duchy of Guienne; and on May 26th, 1329, the young King of England embarked at Dover for Wissant, in a Winchelsea ship, attended by his Chancellor and a large suite. The homage was performed at Amiens on June 6th, and Edward retreated to Dover on the 11th of the month.[3] In the following year he again visited France, to perform a vow made to Our Lady of Boulogne, leaving Dover on April 4th, and returning thither on April 20th.[4]
The king was meditating a journey to Ireland in 1332, when Edward, son of John Baliol, in vindication of his claim to the throne of Scotland, landed in Fifeshire, with a number of English nobles, who had been dispossessed of property in Scotland. The expedition, consisting of three thousand men, disembarked at Kinghorn, where, it is said, ships had never touched before,[5] and the ships were then sent into the mouth of the Tay. Baliol's success was at first rapid; and since, immediately after his coronation at Scone, he offered homage to Edward, the latter deemed it prudent to assist him with an army.
In the meantime, Baliol was besieged in Perth by a Scots army, under the Earl of Dunbar and Sir Archibald Douglas, who, not knowing how to deal with the English fleet which was lying in the river, and which was a powerful factor in the defence of the place, sent to Berwick for a celebrated Scots sailor named John Crabbe, described in the so-called Lanercost Chronicle as pirata crudelis et solemnis. Crabbe, who then hated the English, although, in return for the ingratitude and ill-treatment experienced from his country-
