Courting Favour — Nigel Tranter

Younger son of the ninth Earl of Dunbar and March, John Cospatrick expected to inherit neither title nor estate. But when his mother, the formidable Black Agnes, bequeathed him the earldom of Moray in the far north of Scotland, John was to find himself unexpectedly elevated to become the King's lieutenant and arbiter up in those unruly parts.

At the age of twenty-two, with no experience in such matters, John was to prove himself a skilled diplomat. But his greatest test as envoy and negotiator came when the new King, Robert the Second, sent him to England to win over John of Gaunt and attempt to end years of cross-border warfare by entering into a formal treaty of peace and accord with England and an alliance with France.