Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/617

Rh ROBERT 593 to Hemingford), "when he heard of the king's coming, fled from his face and burnt the castle of Ayr which he held." Yet, when Edward was forced by home affairs to quit Scotland, Annandale and certain earldoms, including Carrick, were excepted from the districts he assigned to his followers, Bruce and the other earls being treated as waverers whose allegiance might still be retained. In 1299 a regency was appointed in Scotland in name of Baliol, and a letter of Baliol mentions Robert Bruce, lord of Carrick, as regent, along with William of Lamberton, bishop of St Andrews, and John Comyn the younger, a strange combination, Lamberton the friend of Wallace, Comyn the enemy of Bruce, and Bruce a regent in name of Baliol. Comyn in his own interest as Baliol's heir was the active regent ; the insertion of the name of Bruce was an attempt to secure his co-operation. For the next four years he kept studiously in the background waiting his time. A statement of Langtoft that he was at the parlia- ment of Lincoln in 1301, when the English barons repudi- ated the claim of the pope to the suzerainty of Scotland, is not to be credited, though his father may have been there. In the campaign of 1304, when Edward renewed his attempt on Scotland and reduced Stirling, Bruce sup- ported the English king, who in one of his letters to him says, "If you complete that which you have begun we shall hold the war ended by your deed and all the land of Scotland gained." But, while apparently aiding Edward, Bruce had taken a step which bound him to the patriotic cause. On llth June, a month before the fall of Stirling, he met Lamberton at Cambuskenneth and entered into a secret bond by which they were to support each other against all adversaries and undertake nothing without consulting together. The death of his father in this year may have determined his course and led him to prefer the chance of the Scottish crown to his English estates and the friendship of Edward. This determination closes the first chapter of his life ; the second, from 1304 to 1314, is occupied by his contest for the kingdom, which was really won at Bannockburn, though disputed till the treaty of Northampton in 1328; the last, from 1314 to his death in 1329, was the period of the establishment of his government and dynasty by an administration as skilful as his generalship. It is to the second of these that historians, attracted by its brilliancy even amongst the many romances of history and its importance to Scottish history, have directed most of their attention, and it is during it that his personal character, tried by adversity and prosperity, gradually unfolds itself. But all three periods require to be kept in view to form a just estimate of Bruce. That which terminated in 1304, though unfortunately few characteristics, personal or indi- vidual, have been preserved, shows him by his conduct to have been the normal Scottish noble of the time. A con- flict of interest and of bias led to contradictory action, and this conflict was increased in his case by his father's residence in England, his own upbringing at the English court, his family feud with Baliol and the Comyns, and the jealousy common to his class of Wallace, the mere knight, who had rallied the commons against the invader and taught the nobles what was required in a leader of the people. The merit of Bruce is that he did not despise the lesson. Prompted alike by patriotism and ambition, at the prime of manhood he chose the cause of national independence with all its perils, and stood by it with a constancy which never wavered until he secured its triumph. Though it is crowded with incidents, the main facts in the central decade of Bruce's life may be rapidly told. The fall of Stirling was followed by the capture and execution of Wallace at London on 24th August 1305. Edward hoped still to conciliate the nobles and gain Scotland by a policy of clemency to all who did not dispute his authority. A parliament in London (16th September), to which Scottish representatives were summoned, agreed to an ordinance for the government of Scotland, which, though on the model of those for Wales and Ireland, treating Scotland as a third subject province under an English lieutenant, John de Bretagne, was in other respects not severe. Bruce is reputed to have been one of the advisers who assisted in framing it ; but a provision that his castle of Kildrummy was to be placed in charge of a person for whom he should answer shows that Edward not without reason suspected his fidelity. Challenged by the king with the bond between him and Lamberton (according to one account discovered by the treachery of John Comyn, with whom a similar engagement had been made or attempted), Bruce secretly quitted London, and on 10th February 1306 met by appointment, in the church of the Friars Minor at Dumfries, Comyn, whom he slew at the high altar for refusing to join in his plans. So much is certain, though the precise incidents of the interview were variously told. It was not their first encounter, for a letter of 1299 to Edward from Scotland describes Comyn as having seized Bruce by the throat at a meeting at Peebles, when they were with difficulty reconciled by the joint regency. The bond with Lamberton was now sealed by blood and the confederates lost no time in putting it into execution. Within little more than six weeks Bruce, collecting his adherents in the south-west, passed from Lochmaben to Glasgow and thence to Scone, where he was crowned by the bishop of St Andrews on 25th March, the bishops of Glasgow and Moray, with the earls of Lennox, Athole, and Errol, being present. Two days later Isabella, countess of Buchan, claimed the right of her family the Macduffs, earls of Fife, to place the Scottish king on his throne, and the ceremony was repeated with an addition flattering to the Celtic race. Though a king, Bruce had not yet a king- dom, and his efforts to obtain it were till the death of Edward I. disastrous failures. In June he was defeated at Methven by Pembroke, and on llth August he was sur- prised in Strathfillan, where he had taken refuge, by Lord Lorn. The ladies of his family were sent to Kildrummy in January, and Bruce, almost without a follower, fled to Rathlin, an island off Antrim (Ireland). Edward, though suffering from his last illness, came to the north in the following spring. On his way he granted the Scottish estates of Bruce and his adherents to his own followers, Annandale falling to the earl of Hereford. At Carlisle there was published a bull excommunicating Bruce, along with another absolving Edward from the oath he had taken to observe Magna Charta and the other charters on which the English constitution rests. Elizabeth the wife, Marjory the daughter, Christina the sister of Bruce, were captured in a sanctuary at Tain and sent prisoners to England. The countess of Buchan was confined in a cage at Berwick and another of Bruce's sisters, Mary, in a cage at Roxburgh. The bishops of St Andrews and Glasgow and the abbot of Scone were suspended from their bene- fices and sent as prisoners to the south of England. Nigel Bruce, his youngest brother, was beheaded at Berwick, Christopher Seton, his brother-in-law, at Dumfries. The earl of Athole was sent to London and hanged on a gallows 30 feet higher than the pole on which the head of Wallace still stood. Two other brothers of Bruce, Thomas and Alexander (dean of Glasgow), met the same fate at Carlisle. There were many minor victims, but the chronicler of Lanercost notes that the number of those who wished Bruce to be confirmed in the kingdom increased daily. While thus wreaking his vengeance Edward himself was summoned by death at Burgh-on-the-Sands, on the Solway, XX. 75