Tue Battie or Dornock. 155 
countries. As usual, it was the mutual aggressiveness of the 
borderers that occasioned a renewal of the war. Whilst Edward 
III. was preparing his proclamation’ denouncing the Scots for a 
rupture of the peace, Sir Archibald Douglas on Monday, 22nd 
March, was making a flying raid? into Gilsland, where he ravaged 
the lands of Sir Ralf Dacre, lord of Naworth and keeper of Carlisle 
Castle. Measures of reprisal were promptly taken. On the 
Wednesday?* following, the 24th, Sir Antony Lucy, leading a 
strong body of English marchmen, entered Scotland. His force is 
variously stated by the three early historians* who deal with the 
expedition. The chronicle of Lanercost calls it merely a powerful 
body ; Hemingburgh states it at 800 men; and Knyghton follows 
him in giving the same figure. William of Lochmaben, probably 
from his name a renegade Scot, was with the Englishmen, who 
marched twelve miles inland. The new moon had set in’ on the 
16th, so that there must have been moonlight all through the 
night of the 24th and far into the morning. ‘This, of course, 
enabled them the better to effect their entry and achieve their 
purpose, which was not war so much as plunder. By next day 
they had scoured over an area computed at 12 leagues, and with 
a large booty, consisting of a great many head of cattle, they 
were with all possible despatch making their way back to bonnie 
Carlisle. : 
In raids of this kind it is obvious that the sooner the cattle 
could be got across the firth the better. The course they appar- 
ently took has a most interesting bearing on the history of the 
1 Poedera, 23rd March, 1333. 
2 Lanercost Chron., 272; Kiuyghton in Decem. Scruptores, 2562. 
3 The editor of the Lanercost Chronicle misdated: it 23rd March. 
The text says it was on the vigil of the Annunciation. But as the Annun- 
ciation was 25th March, the vigil was on the 24th. 
+ Lanercost and Knyghton, where above cited. Hemingburgh (Eng. 
Hist. Soc.), ii., 307. See also Bower's Scotichronicon, ii., 310. 
5 For this calculation I am indebted to my friend Mr Arch. A. 
Young. By Nicholas’s Chronology of History I made out the date of the 
new moon to have been the 20th, but I am assured the lunar table given in 
that work is erroneous. Mr Young’s calculation is explicitly confirmed 
by an amended Lunar Calendar, framed by Mr A. V. Gough of Chilton 
Thorn Vicarage, Fence Houses, County Durham, which he has with much 
courtesy put at my service in manuscript. 
