ABSTRACT
The masterful Edward I was succeeded by his unimpressive son in 1307. Edward II inherited an empty treasury, a war with Scotland and a magnate class restive and resentful. The Union was distant enough, though in language and shared political experience a United Kingdom was being forged, for which contemporaries were already using the term Great Britain. The paid army was, particularly at the start, augmented by mercenary forces recruited in south-west Germany by the old device of the money-fief. The vassal was paid a salary graded according to the character of the force he provided; such contracts had probably suggested the indentures on which the domestic army was now mainly recruited. The Scottish story is thus a long catalogue of unruly subjects and kings who never quite succeeded in making their authority accepted. The collaboration led to the reduction in the power of the nobility; their factious disobedience which had hampered earlier kings, was largely controlled.
