Page:Robert the Bruce and the struggle for Scottish independence - 1909.djvu/16

vi as to avoid unnecessary controversy. The fact remains that the Scottish Kings were content to pay homage for English fiefs; the precise extent and locality of those fiefs it is impossible to define.

Indignant remonstrance has been addressed to me for having suggested the identity of William Wallace with William le Waleys who, in company with a priest, was alleged to have stolen 3s. worth of beer from a woman in Perth. It is fair to point out that the charge never was brought to proof; even had it been so, it would have sunk into insignificance beside the many cold-blooded crimes with which Blind Harry proudly credits his hero. It is certainly a curious coincidence that Blind Harry states that Wallace was in Perth, disguised as a priest, just about the time the theft was committed.

It has been pointed out that in following the version of the Bruce pedigree, compiled by Miss Cumming-Bruce, I am at variance with some other writers who have attained greater proficiency than I can lay claim to in Norman genealogy. Mr. J. H. Round points out that while the de Brus family came from the Château d'Adam at Brix, near Cherbourg, the house of de Braose, which obtained lands in Sussex, originated at Briouze, in the south of Normandy.

Mr. William Brown, in a paper on "The Brus Cenotaph at Guisborough" (Yorkshire Archæological Journal, 1895, vol. xiii., pp. 226-261), gives the following pedigree of the family of Brus of Skelton and Annandale, in which it will be seen that the first two