On 23 March 1323, Sir Andrew Harclay, earl of Carlisle, was arraigned before a commission of royal justices, charged with treasonous negotiations with Robert Bruce, the king's enemy. He was not given a hearing, but was condemned by the king's record, with the judges merely pronouncing the sentence already decreed by the king. Only the year before, Edward II had showered honours upon Harclay as a reward for his defeat and capture of Thomas, earl of Lancaster, at Boroughbridge, and with his own hand had belted Harclay with the sword of the earldom of Carlisle. Now, the king's anger at Harclay's collusion with the Scots and an intense sense of personal betrayal were reflected in his orders that Andrew was to suffer an elaborate ceremony of degradation before his execution. As the near contemporary account in the Brut has the sheriff of Carlisle, Sir Antony Lucy, pronounce:

To this end, Harclay had been ‘led unto the bar in the manner of an earl, worthily arrayed, and with a sword girt about him, and hosed and spurred’. His degradation commenced with the hewing off of his gilded spurs by a knave. Next, the sword with which he had been invested as earl by the king ‘to keep and defend his land therewith’ was broken over his head. Finally, he was stripped ‘of his furred mantel and of his hood, and of his furred coats and of his girdle’. Now bereft of his status as both earl and knight, he was condemned to death.