Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 2.djvu/57

 mak sicker;" and rushing into the sanctuary, lie found Comyn still alive, but helpless and bleeding upon the steps of the high altar. The dying victim was ruthlessly dispatched on the sacred spot where he lay; and, almost at the same moment, Sir Robert Comyn, the uncle, entering the convent upon the noise and alarm of the scuffle, shared in a similar fate. The tumult had now become general throughout the town; and the judges who held their court in a hall of the castle, not knowing what to fear, but believing their lives to be in immediate danger, hastily barricadoed the doors. Bruce, assembling his followers, surrounded the castle, and threatening to force an entrance with fire, obliged those within to surrender, and permitted them to depart in safety from Scotland.

That this fatal event fell out in the heat and reckless passion of the moment, there can be no doubt. Goaded as he had been to desperation by the ruin which he knew to be impending over him, and even insulted personally by the individual who had placed him in such jeopardy, Bruce dared hardly, in that age of superstitious observance, to have committed so foul an act of sacrilegious murder. In the imperfectly arranged state of his designs, without concert among his friends, or preparation for defence, the assassination of the first noble in the land, even without the aggravations which in this instance particularized the deed, could not but have threatened the fortune of his cause with a brief and fatal issue. He knew, himself, that the die of his future life was now cast; and that the only alternative left, upon which he had to make election, was to be a fugitive or a king. Without hesitation, he at once determined to assert his claim to the Scottish crown.

When Bruce, thus inevitably pressed by circumstances, adopted the only course by which there remained a chance of future extrication and honour, he had not a single fortress at his command besides those two patrimonial ones of Lochmaben and Kildrummy; the latter situated in Aberdeenshire, at too great a distance from the scene of action to prove of service. He had prepared no system of offensive warfare; nor did it seem that, in the beginning, he should be even able to maintain himself on the defensive, with any hope of success. Three earls only, those of Lenox, Errol, and Athole, joined his standard; Randolph, the nephew of Bruce, who afterwards became the renowned Earl of Moray, Christopher of Seaton, his brother-in-law; Sir James Douglas, whose fate became afterwards so interestingly associated with that of his master, and about ten other barons then of little note, but who were destined to lay the foundations of some of the most honourable families in the kingdom, constituted, with the brothers of the royal adventurer, the almost sole power against which such fearful odds were presently to be directed the revenge of the widely connected and powerful house of Comyn, the overwhelming force of England, and the fulminations of the church. Without other resource than what lay in his own undaunted resolution, and in the untried fidelity and courage of his little band, Bruce ascended the throne of his ancestors, at Scone, on the 27th day of March, 1306.

The ceremony of the coronation was performed with what state the exigency and disorder of the moment permitted. The Bishop of Glasgow supplied from his own wardrobe the robes in which Robert was arrayed on the occasion; and a slight coronet of gold was made to serve in absence of the hereditary crown; which, along with the other symbols of royalty, had been carried off by Edward into England. A banner, wrought with the arms of Baliol, was delivered by the Bishop of Glasgow to the new king, beneath which he received the homage of the earls and knights by whom he w~as attended. The earls of Fife, from a remote antiquity, had possessed the privilege of crowning the kings of Scotland; but at this time, Duncan, the representative of that family, favoured the English interest. His sister, however, the Countess of Buchan, with a boldness and