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 at Troyes. He went on his way again towards Rome, and was hoping to be allowed to return to England, for it may be that he had not heard of the second repulse of the request made on his behalf, when he died suddenly at St. Cyriac in 1226. His death was put down to poison, and [q.v.] was afterwards accused of having caused it. When at the same time the justiciar was accused of having caused the loss of Poitou, his counsel answered that the rebellion of Falkes was the true cause of the loss of Rochelle. Falkes was certainly a greedy, cruel, and overbearing man. For greediness and cruelty, however, he was surpassed by many men of the same time—by John, for example, and, to make a less hateful comparison, probably by Richard also; nor, to quote men more nearly of his own rank, was he more greedy than William Brewer, or more cruel than the Earl of Chester. That he was not wholly without some religious feelings is shown by his repentance and penances for the wrongs done to the monks of Warden and St. Albans, and perhaps also by his assumption of the cross. At St. Albans, however, his love of mockery and his habit of insolence broke through his probably sincere expression of penitence. This insolence made a strong impression on the men of his age; it rendered the injuries he inflicted on others doubly hard to bear. The abbot of St. Albans, for example, complained of the injury done to the crops of his house by the overflow of water from a pool Falkes had made at Luton. 'I wish,' he answered, 'I had waited until your grain had been garnered, and then the water would have destroyed it all.' His evil doings were characteristic of the class of military adventurers to which he belonged. In common with others of that class he was brave, and indeed his courage seems to have been of no ordinary sort. The foremost part he played in the history of his time shows that he was not a mere leader of men-at-arms. He was, however, no match for the wary politicians with whom he had to do, and his statement that he had simply carried out the devices of others was doubtless to some extent true. The Earl of Chester, for example, seems to have used him for a while, and then left him in his time of need. His fall was a crushing blow to the hopes of the malcontent party, and put an end to the importance of the foreign faction. Unlike most other adventurers, Falkes was faithful to his masters. His revolt was not against the king, but against orderly administrative government, which was hateful and ruinous to him. He left one daughter, Eva, married to Llewelyn ap Iorwerth, prince of North Wales.



BRECHIN, DAVID (d. 1321), lord of Brechin, a royal burgh in Angusshire, was eldest son of Sir David of Brechin, one of the barons of Scotland who attended Edward I into France 1297 : his mother, whose Christian name is not known, was one of the seven sisters of King Robert Bruce, but his father seems to have favoured the English side up to the king's victory at Inverary in 1308, when he retired to his castle of Brechin. Being besieged, however, he made his peace and ranged himself under the standard of his brother-in-law. We do not know when and where the younger Sir David was born, or what were those feats of arms in the Holy Land said to have won him the poetical title of 'The Flower of Chivalry.' Like his father, he attached himself to the English, and in 1312 was made warden of the town and castle of Dundee, then in English hands. He received at this time a pension out of the customs duties on hides and wool at the port of Berwick-on-Tweed, through Piers Gaveston, the king's favourite. At the battle of Bannockburn (1314) he was taken prisoner, but afterwards came into great favour with King Robert. It is said, however, that he still received pay from Edward, and held special letters of protection from him. Brechin was one of the nobles who signed the letter of 6 April 1320, soliciting the pope's interference. De Brechin was implicated in Lord Soulis's conspiracy against King Robert. The plans were revealed to him on an oath of secrecy. He refused co-operation, but kept silence. The plot was divulged, and Bruce instantly arrested Soulis, Brechin, and others, and called a parliament at Perth (August 1320) to try them. Brechin and others were executed. The records of the trial are lost, but Tytler, without giving references, says there is evidence in the archives of the Tower of Brechin's complicity in the treason. Other writers doubt his guilt. The old Scottish poets commemorate him in their historical poems as 'the gud Schir David the Brechyn,' and his death left a stain on his uncle's character. He is called 'the flower of chivalrie,' 'the prime young man of his age for all arts of both peace and war.' All speak of his connection with the crusades, but if there is truth in 