Biography of Thomas Randolph 1st Earl Moray 1278-1332

Froissart. These Scottish men are right hardy and sore travailing in harness and in wars. For when they will enter into England, within a day and a night they will drive their whole host twenty-four mile, for they are all a-horseback, without it be the trandals and laggers of the host, who follow after afoot. The knights and squires are well horsed, and the common people and other on little hackneys and geldings; and they carry with them no carts nor chariots, for the diversities of the mountains that they must pass through in the country of Northumberland. They take with them no purveyance of bread nor wine, for their usage and soberness is such in time of war, that they will pass in the journey a great long time with flesh half sodden, without bread, and drink of the river water without wine, and they neither care for pots nor pans, for they seethe beasts in their own skins. They are ever sure to find plenty of beasts in the country that they will pass through: therefore they carry with them none other purveyance, but on their horse between the saddle and the panel they truss a broad plate of metal, and behind the saddle they will have a little sack full of oatmeal, to the intent that when they have eaten of the sodden flesh,' then they lay this plate on the fire and temper a little of the oatmeal; and when the plate is hot, they cast of the thin paste thereon, and so make a little cake in manner of a cracknell or biscuit, and that they eat to comfort withal their stomachs. Wherefore it is no great marvel though they make greater journeys than other people do. And in this manner were the Scots entered into the said country, and wasted and brent all about as they went, and took great number of beasts. They were to the number of four thousand men of arms, knights and squires, mounted on good horses, and other ten thousand men of war were armed after their guise, right hardy and fierce, mounted on little hackneys, the which were never tied nor kept at hard meat, but let go to pasture in the fields and bushes. They had two good captains, for king Robert of Scotland, who in his days had been hardy and prudent, was as then of great age and sore grieved with the great sickness; but he had made one of his captains a gentle prince and a valiant in arms called the earl of Moray, bearing in his arms silver, three oreillers gules; and the other was the lord William Douglas, who was reputed for the most hardy knight and greatest adventurer in all the realm of Scotland, and he bare azure, a chief silver. These two lords were renowned as chief in all deeds of arms and great prowess in all Scotland.