These requisitions being remonstrated against by a few of our boldest chiefs (amongst whom, your illustrious father, gentle lady, stood the most conspicuous), the tyrant repeated them with additional demands, and prepared to resent the appeal on the whole nation.
"Three months have hardly elapsed since the fatal battle of Dunbar, where, indignant at the accumulated outrages committed on their passive monarch, our irritated nobles at last rose, but too late, to assert their rights.

Alas! one defeat drove them to despair.

Baliol was taken, and themselves obliged to again swear fealty to their enemy.
Then came the seizure of the treasures of our monasteries, the burning of the national records, the sequestration of our property, the banishment of our chiefs, the violation of our women, and the slavery or murder of the poor people yoked to the land.

'The storm of desolation, thus raging over our country; how,' cried the young warrior to me, 'can any of her sons shrink from the glory of again attempting her restoration ?' He then informed me that Earl de Warenne (whom Edward had left lord warden of Scotland), was taken ill, and retired to London, leaving Aymer de Valence to be his deputy.

To this new tyrant, De Warenne has lately sent a host of mercenaries, to hold the south of Scotland in subjection; and to reinforce Cressingham and Ormsby, two noted plunderers, who command northward, from Stirling to the shores of Sutherland.
"With these representations of the conduct of our oppressors, the brave knight demonstrated the facility with which invaders, drunk with power, and gorged with rapine, could be vanquished by a resolute and hardy people.