Just twenty years later, on one August day in the year of
grace 1346, Master John Copeland--as men now called Jehan Kuypelant,
now secretary to the Queen of England,--brought his mistress the
unhandsome tidings that David Bruce had invaded her realm with forty
thousand Scots to back him. The Brabanter found plump Queen Philippa
with the kingdom's arbitress--Dame Catherine de Salisbury, whom King
Edward, third of that name to reign in Britain, and now warring in
France, very notoriously adored and obeyed.
This king, indeed, had been despatched into France chiefly, they
narrate, to release the Countess' husband, William de Montacute, from
the French prison of the Chatelet. You may appraise her dominion by
this fact: chaste and shrewd, she had denied all to King Edward, and
in consequence he could deny her nothing; so she sent him to fetch
back her husband, whom she almost loved. That armament had sailed from
Southampton on Saint George's day.
These two women, then, shared the Brabanter's execrable news. Already
Northumberland, Westmoreland, and Durham were the broken meats of King
David.
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