Page:Robert the Bruce and the struggle for Scottish independence - 1909.djvu/422

354 master. Eye witness of the defeat of the squadrons of de Clifford and de Beaumont by the "schiltrome" of Randolph, Bruce was able to enact the same miracle on a far larger scale on the following day. The campaign of 1314 conferred on infantry an importance which the subsequent invention of gunpowder came to confirm.

King Robert left five lawful children. By his first wife, Isabel, daughter of Donald, Earl of Mar, he had one daughter, the Princess Marjorie, who married Walter the Steward, and died in her first-child-bed.

By his second wife, Elizabeth de Burgh, who became Queen of Scotland on her husband's coronation in 1306, he had two daughters, Matilda and Margaret, born after 1316, and one son, David, born March 5, 1324. Subsequently a younger son, John, was born, but he died in infancy and was buried at Restennet.

Princess Matilda married an esquire called Thomas Isaac, whom subsequent Scottish writers have attempted to dignify by calling him de Ysack. But in fact the alliance was not a brilliant one, though it may have been a romantic love affair. Fordun refers to the husband as "a certain esquire," while about the Princess he observes severely: De Matilda penitus taceo, quia nihil dignum egit memoria—"About Matilda I shall say nothing, because she did nothing worthy of record."

Princess Margaret, the younger sister, married William, Earl of Sutherland.

Besides these, King Robert left a number of