heraldryofyorkmi01custuoft

THE WARRENNES. 289
" Conisburgh, and carried off the same wool against the inhibition of the
"bailiffs of the said town of Roderham."* He does not seem, therefore,
to have been a popular character, and in an old poem called Richard of
Almasque, he is thus spoken of:
" By God that is abovv ous he deede muche synne,
That let passe over see the Erl of Warynne ;
He hath robbed Englelonde the mores ant the fenne,
The gold and the silver ant y-boren henne." t
Dugdale, in his Summonses to Parliament, attributes to him the establishment,
in the Parliament held 23rd Edward I., of the custom of sending burgesses
to Parliament. The Earl's spirited conduct seems, however, only to have
delayed the attack upon himself, for, shortly after (yth Ed.), his rights in
Sussex were impeached before John de Reygate and his associates, the
justices' itinerants in the county of Sussex; but the "jurat," consisting of
six knights and six lords of towns, confirmed the claims of the Earl.
Likewise at Lincoln and Scarborough similar attacks were made on his
rights in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire ; but, Mr. Watson says,
" upon an
" inquisition being taken it does not appear that anything was found for
" the King." And therefore I suppose that Edward, feeling
that he could
neither coerce nor reduce his powerful baron, deemed it the best policy to
enlist his support ; and accordingly we find him taking the leading part in
Edward's proceedings in Scotland. I shall treat of these generally under
Royal Heraldry. It will suffice now to notice the details thereof specially
associated with Earl Warenne.
Alexander III., King of Scotland, having died childless, the crown of
Scotland devolved upon his granddaughter Margaret, the child of his
daughter, who had married Eric, King of Norway. Edward conceived the
idea of uniting the two kingdoms together by the marriage of " the maid
" of Norway," as she was called, to his son Edward, Prince of Wales ;
and
a treaty having been agreed to by the Scotch for this purpose, Warrenne was
employed, A.D. 1290, by the King to
obtain a guarantee from them for the
due performance of the marriage. He was actually in Scotland, on his way
to Orkney to meet the young Queen, when tidings arrived of her death.
Had she lived,
" the Union
" would have taken place at once, but God had
ordained that three centuries of bloodshed and strife should ensue before
the happy consummation thereof.
When in 1296 Edward received at Berwick^, which he had taken by
storm, Balliol's formal renunciation of his homage to him, he treated his
letter with angry contempt, exclaiming : "
Ha !
ce fol felon,
tel folie faict !
*
Answers returned by Jury to inquisition as to certain abuses Rotuli Hundredorum, 1st Ed. 1276,
printed by Records Commission, 1812, p. no.
t Old Yorkshire, 2nd series, p. 179. J Tytler's History of Scotland.