Page:Robert the Bruce and the struggle for Scottish independence - 1909.djvu/423

1329 A.D.] natural children, of whom the most distinguished was Sir Robert de Brus, who fell at the battle of Dupplin in 1332. He received extensive lands from his father, among others those of Liddesdale forfeited by de Soulis; and in the charters conveying them he is styled by the King filius carissimus or dilectissimus.

Another illegitimate son, Walter, owned the lands of Odiston on the Clyde, and died before his father. Nigel de Bruce, slain at the battle of Durham, was also, it is almost certain, the king's son. Attempts have been made to prove the legitimacy of a third daughter, Elizabeth, who married Sir Walter Oliphant of Gask, but the silence of Fordun about this lady is, as Lord Hailes observes, significant. Fordun could not have been ignorant of the existence of a third Princess of the royal house, especially as four charters, by David II., dated February 28, 1364, are preserved among the Gask muniments, showing that Elizabeth was alive at the time the Gesta Annalia were being written. That King David refers to her in these charters as dilecte sorori nostre does not necessarily imply her legitimacy, any more than that of the base-born Sir Robert de Brus was implied when his father styled him filius carissimus.

Another natural daughter, Margaret, who married Robert Glen, has been confused with Princess Margaret, who has been supposed to have been the widow of Glen when she married the Earl of Sutherland; but as the Chamberlain's accounts show that she was still unmarried in 1343, and Countess of Sutherland in 1345, there was hardly time for a previous marriage, nor does Fordun make any allusion to it.