The great nobles thus, to serve their ambitions, betrayed their country: _the communitas_ (whatever that term may here mean) made a futile protest.
As lord among his vassals, Edward heard the pleadings and evidence in autumn 1292; and out of the descendants, in the female line, of David Earl of Huntingdon, youngest son of David I., he finally (November 17, 1292) preferred John Balliol (_great-grandson_ of the earl through his eldest daughter) to Bruce the Old, grandfather of the famous Robert Bruce, and _grandson_ of Earl David's second daughter.

The decision, according to our ideas, was just; no modern court could set it aside.

But Balliol was an unpopular weakling--"an empty tabard," the people said--and Edward at once subjected him, king as he was, to all the humiliations of a petty vassal.

He was summoned into his Lord's Court on the score of the bills of tradesmen.

If Edward's deliberate policy was to goad Balliol into resistance and then conquer Scotland absolutely, in the first of these aims he succeeded.
In 1294 Balliol was summoned, with his Peers, to attend Edward in Gascony.