Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/324

310 continued to be held by a feudatory title from the English crown.

William was succeeded by his son, Alexander II., A.D. 1214. During the reign of this prince there were few events of importance. He occupied himself rather with the internal affairs of the country than with schemes of foreign aggression, and his policy was attended, on the Whole, with favourable results. His son, Alexander III., succeeded to the throne in the year 1249, and the peace and prosperity by which nearly the whole of his reign was distinguished was to be referred in a great measure to the wisdom and patriotism of his ancestors. As a proof of the advance which had been made by the nation in power, we are told that at this time the army of the king amounted to 100,000 men, and 1,000 well-appointed horsemen. Alexander III. was only nine years of age when his father died, but in order to prevent foreign interference with the affairs of the kingdom, the boy was immediately crowned at Scone, and was knighted by the Bishop of St. Andrews. Two years afterwards the English king gave his daughter Margaret in marriage to Alexander; and the nuptials between the two children were celebrated with great pomp at York, in December, A.D. 1251.

The only important danger which threatened Alexander arose from the attacks of the Norwegians, whose old quarrel with the Scots, respecting the islands of the Hebrides, was renewed in this reign. In the summer of 1264, when the young king had just attained to the years of manhood, Haco, of Norway, a powerful chief and a renowned warrior, set sail, at the head of a numerous force, for the Scottish shores. The Norwegian fleet arrived in the Frith of Clyde, while Alexander, assembling his troops, advanced to meet the invaders. A storm arose, by which the foreign armament sustained considerable damage; and its violence was scarcely abated when Haco reached the Bay of Largs, near the mouth of the Clyde. Here he was met and attacked by the Scottish army, which arrived in successive divisions. A protracted conflict of three days duration took place there, and the plain, still covered with cairns and rude monuments of the slain, bears witness to the bloody and obstinate character of the struggle. Alexander at length gained a complete victory; the remnant of the invaders retreated to their ships, and effected their escape to the islands of Orkney, where the redoubted Haco died, either from wounds received in the battle, or from mortification at its result. The victory of Largs terminated for ever the wars between Scotland and Norway; and, after a lapse of seventeen years, the two nations cemented their quarrels by a marriage between Margaret, the daughter of Alexander, and the youthful Eric, Haco's Successor.

During a period of twenty years succeeding the Norwegian expedition, we may believe that the kingdom of Scotland enjoyed a condition of uninterrupted prosperity. The young king governed his people wisely and well, and, undisturbed by enemies from without, he was able to repress the quarrels of those rival factions of the nobility which for many years had maintained towards each other a position of active or passive hostility. But heavy clouds were gathering round the future of this prosperous king, and at the moment of its greatest glory the royal house of Scotland was doomed to perish from the land. Margaret of England, the queen of Alexander, had died in 1275. Besides the daughter, whose marriage had restored peace to the nation, two sons had been born to him, one of whom died in childhood. In the year 1283 the Queen of Norway expired, leaving only an infant daughter, who had also received the loved name of Margaret. A few months later the prince of Scotland followed his sister to the grave, and thus the king, while yet in the prime of manhood, was bereft of wife and children.

Anxious to secure the succession to his grand-daughter, who was called the Maiden of Norway, Alexander summoned a council or parliament at Scone, and those present bound themselves to accept the Norwegian princess as their sovereign, in the event of the king dying without issue. In the hope of obtaining a direct heir, Alexander took for a second wife Jolita, the daughter of the Count of Dreux. The new queen was young and very beautiful, but the marriage was described as attended by evil omens, and the events which followed it might well assist the imagination of the chroniclers as to the portents they describe. Within a year afterwards Alexander was riding at nightfall from Kinghorn to Inverkeithen, on the shore of the Frith of Forth, when the horse starting or stumbling, rolled with him over a precipice. Thus died a prince whom the nation mourned as the last and worthiest of his line.

The first proceeding of the estates of Scotland was to fulfil their vow by appointing a regency to exercise the functions of government during the minority of the infant queen. But it was evident that the succession of the little Maiden of Norway was scarcely likely to be secured by such a measure. A female sovereign was new to the people, and the same prejudice existed against her as that which, in England, had excluded from the throne the daughter of Henry I. It was therefore scarcely to be expected that the turbulent chiefs would preserve their allegiance to a child then in a foreign country, and partly of foreign extraction. It was not long before one strong party formed the design of placing its chief upon the throne, to the exclusion of the Maiden of Norway. Robert de Brus, or Bruce, could show some relationship to the royal family, his mother, Isabella, being one of the daughters of David, Earl of Huntingdon, brother of William the Lion. This chief, who was supported by many of the Scottish nobility, held a meeting of his adherents on the 20th of September, A.D. 1286. The scene of the assembly was Turnberry Castle, in Ayrshire, the seat of Bruce's son, Robert Bruce, who had received the title of Earl of Carrick, in right of his wife. As agreement was entered into, by which all the persons present bound themselves to adhere to one another on all occasions, and against all persons, saving their allegiance to the King of England, and to him who should gain the kingdom of Scotland as the rightful heir of the late king. There appears little doubt that the real object of the meeting was to obtain the crown for Bruce, to which end they would have been willing to secure the assistance of Edward, by acknowledging him as feudal lord of Scotland. The English monarch, however, had other designs, which he proceeded to carry into effect.

Edward was the grand-uncle of the Maiden of Norway, and he, with her father Eric, might therefore be considered her natural guardians. The latter seems to have interested