At last the king set off to embark at Winchelsea.  While there, the earls presented to him a belated list of grievances.  He refused to deal with their demand for the confirmation of the charters.  “My full council,” he declared to the envoys of the earls, “is not with me, and without it I cannot reply to your requests.  Tell those who have sent you that, if they will come with me to Flanders, they will please me greatly.  If they will not come, I trust they will do no harm to me, or at any rate to my kingdom.”  On August 24 he took ship for Flanders, and a few days later he and his troops safely landed at Sluys, whence they made their way to Ghent.  Nearly a thousand men-at-arms and a great force of infantry, largely Welsh and Irish, swelled the expedition to considerable proportions.  After all his troubles, Edward found that the loyalty of his subjects enabled him to carry out the ideal which he had formulated two years before.  King and nation were to meet common dangers by action undertaken in common.

Everything else was ruthlessly sacrificed in order that the king might take an army to Flanders.  The Gascon expedition was quietly dropped.  But the gravest difficulty arose not from Gascony but Scotland.  Edward’s choice of agents to carry out his Scottish policy had been singularly unhappy.  Warenne, the governor, was a dull and lethargic nobleman more than sixty-six years of age.  He complained of the bad climate of Scotland, and passed most of his time on his Yorkshire estates.  In his absence Cressingham, the treasurer, and Ormesby, the justiciar, became the real representatives of the English power.  Cressingham was a pompous ecclesiastic, who appropriated to his own uses the money set aside for the fortification of Berwick, and was odious to the Scots for his rapacity and incompetence.  Ormesby was a pedantic lawyer, rigid in carrying out the king’s orders but stiff and unsympathetic in dealing with the Scots.  Under such rulers Scotland was neither subdued nor conciliated.  No real effort was made to track to their hiding-places in the hills the numerous outlaws, who had abandoned their estates rather than take an oath of fealty to Edward.  When the English governors took action, they were cruel and indiscriminating; and often too were lax and careless.  Matters soon became serious.  William Wallace of Elderslie slew an English official in Clydesdale, and threw in his lot with the outlaws.  He was joined by Sir William Douglas, the former defender of Berwick.  By May, 1297, Scotland was in full revolt.  In the north, Andrew of Moray headed a rising in Strathspey.  In central Scotland the justiciar barely escaped capture, while holding his court at Scone.  The south-west, the home both of Wallace and Douglas, proved the most dangerous district.  There the barons, imitating Bohun and Bigod, based their opposition to Edward on his claim upon their compulsory service in the French wars.  Before long the son of the lord of Annandale, Robert Bruce, now called Earl of Carrick, Robert Wishart, Bishop of Glasgow, and other magnates were in arms, and in close association with Douglas and Wallace.