ary, while
equipping his fleet and amassing treasure at the expense of the Jews and
Lombard usurers, was assembling his parliament, talking to it "of this
important and costly war," for which he obtained large subsidies, and
accepting, without making any difficulty, the vote of the commons'
house, which expressed a desire "to consult their constituents upon this
subject, and begged him to summon an early parliament, to which there
should be elected, in each county, two knights taken from among the best
landowners of their counties."

The King set out for the Continent; the parliament met and considered
the exigences of the war by land and sea, in Scotland and in France;
traders, shipowners, and mariners were called and examined; and the
forces determined to be necessary were voted. Edward took the field,
pillaging, burning, and ravaging, "destroying all the country for twelve
or fourteen leagues in extent," as he himself said in a letter to the
Archbishop of Canterbury. When he set foot on French territory, Count
William of Hainault, his brother-in-law and up to that time his ally,
came to him and said that "he would ride with him no farther, for that
his presence was prayed and required by his uncle the King of France, to
whom he bore no hate, and whom he would go and serve in his own kingdom,
as he had served King Edward on the territory of the Emperor, whose
vicar he was," and Edward wished him "Godspeed!" Such was the binding
nature of feudal ties that the same lord held himself bound to pass from
one camp to another according as he found himself upon the domains of
one or the other of his suzerains in a war one against the other.

Edward continued his march toward St. Quentin, where Philip had at last
arrived with his allies the kings of Bohemia, Navarre, and Scotland,
"after delays which had given rise to great scandal and murmurs
throughout the whole kingdom." The two armies, with a strength,
according to Froissart, of a hundred thousand men on the French side,
and forty-four thousand on the English, were soon facing one another,
near Buironfosse, a large burgh of Picardy. A herald came from the
English camp to tell the King of France that the King of England
"demanded of him battle. To which demand," says Froissart, "the King of
France gave willing assent and accepted the day which was fixed at first
for Thursday the 21st, and afterward for Saturday the 25th of October,
1339."

To judge from the somewhat tang