Page:Robert the Bruce and the struggle for Scottish independence - 1909.djvu/181

1307 A.D.] a bloody gaol-delivery at the last-named town. Besides Sir Alexander, fifteen prisoners, including two knights, Sir David de Inchmartin and Sir John de Cambo, were summarily hanged, the King's injunctions being stern and strict that none of them were to be allowed a trial. Among these victims was Alexander le Skyrmyshour, whom Wallace had appointed hereditary standard-bearer of Scotland, and John de Seton, an Englishman, who, immediately after Comyn's murder, had captured Sir Richard de Siward's new castle of Tibbers and made prisoner Sir Richard, the Sheriff of Dumfriesshire.

The extant record of this wholesale execution at Newcastle enables us to correct Barbour's narrative, which places the fall of Kildrummie a year later, and puts the sentence on the prisoners into the lips of the dying Edward.

Powerful as he was in vengeance, the King of England dared not violate benefit of clergy by taking the lives of the Bishops of Glasgow and St. Andrews and the Abbot of Scone, who fell into his hands during the summer of 1306. To do so would have been an act of sacrilege, and though they were put in irons and sent to English prisons, all the incensed King could do further was to draw up a charge of perjury and rebellion against them, and lay it before the Pope. Nothing illustrates more