setting up gibbets and hanging those who refused to enlist. Edward again entered Scotland and annihilated the 1298 army of Wallace at Falkirk, opening the serried masses of Scotch spearmen with the English long-bow, which here for the first time shows its power. Wallace was totally deserted by his following and wandered in obscurity for seven years, at the end of which he was given up by the Scotch of the other party, carried to London, 1305 tried, and executed as a traitor. His plea and the plea of Scotch historians in his behalf is that he could not have been guilty of treason since he had not sworn fealty to the king of England. He was indicted not only for treason, but for his murders, burnings, sacrileges, and other atrocities. If a If a private citizen of Alsace-Lorraine, after the cession of that territory to Germany, had raised an insurrection on his own account, murdered every German on whom he could lay his hands, tied German priests and nuns back to back and thrown them into rivers, hanged subjects of the empire for refusing to join his army, invaded a German province, butchered its inhabitants without regard to age or sex, burnt a church full of people, and made men and women dance naked before him, pricking them with lances, the fact that he had not personally sworn fealty to the German emperor would hardly have saved his life. The hideous mutilation of a traitor's body was the barbarism of the age. It was in the middle of the seventeenth century that the Scotch, 1650 after hanging Montrose for waging war against them, stuck his head upon a pole, sent his four limbs to four different cities, and buried his mutilated trunk under the gibbet. Wallace himself had made a sword-belt of Cressingham's skin.

The fall of Wallace brought the baronial party of independence again to the front, and Comyn, the leading noble, was elected a guardian of the realm. Edward had 1299 to make two more campaigns, which, however, proved little more than military parades. Again he disturbed nothing, took no vengeance on anybody, though the perfidy of those who had rebelled after solemn submission and homage must have stung him to the heart. The garrison of Stirling held out, contrary to the laws of war, after the surrender of the kingdom, and Edward nearly 1304 lost his life in the siege; yet he spared the garrison. He caused a convention to be held at Perth for the election of Scottish deputies to act in conjunction with English deputies on a commission for the settlement of Scotland. The commission framed a plan, making the king's nephew, John of Bretagne, governor, constituting a joint 1305 judiciary of Englishmen and Scotchmen, and providing for a revision of the laws of David, king of Scotland. This was an anticipation of the union.

Edward might flatter himself that the fire of resistance in Scotland was extinct. It was only smouldering. Yet had he lived and had his hands been free, it would probably not again have blazed; probably it would have died away. But his hands had been full of troubles and foreign war; and now he was near his end. His failing strength was no doubt marked by an ambitious adventurer at his side. Robert Bruce, destined to delay for four calamitous centuries the reunion of the Anglo-Saxon race in Britain, was no Scotch patriot, but a Norman adventurer, playing his own game, carving out for himself a kingdom with his sword, as was the fashion of his race, and as his brother Edward tried afterwards to do in

Ireland. He was the grandson of Robert Bruce, the competitor for the Scottish crown. Bruce the competitor held, with his Scotch earldom of Carrick, great estates in Yorkshire, and had been a member of the judiciary in England. His son, the second Robert Bruce, was Edward's intimate friend, had gone with him to the crusade, and was always a loyal subject of the English crown. The third Robert Bruce, now coming on the scene, was probably born in England, had lived in Edward's court, eaten his bread, borne fealty to him, enjoyed his confidence, been addressed by him as "loyal and faithful,” and employed by him in receiving the submission of a Scotch district. To prove his fidelity he had ravaged the estates of one of the opposite party. It seems true that since the dethronement of Baliol he had formed an ambitious design and had been playing a double game. But a double game is not patriotism or honour. Seeing, as no doubt he did, that Edward's vigour was departing, Bruce 1305 slipped away to Scotland, laid claim to the crown, and set up the standard of revolt. Comyn, the late guardian and the head of the nobility, stood in his way. On pre

tence of a conference he trained him to a church and 1306 stabbed him there. To the stain of treachery he thus

added the stain of murder. It does not seem that he was
at first received with enthusiasm. His chief supporter
was Wishart, Bishop of Glasgow, a man double-dyed in
perfidy. Edward's wrath now broke forth beyond his
wont, yet not wholly without measure. He pronounced
sentence of death against all who had been implicated in
the murder of Comyn, imprisonment during his pleasure
against all who had taken part in the revolt.
He car-
ried out his sentence against Nigel Bruce, the brother of

Robert, and such leaders of the insurrection as fell into his hands. A government in our own day could scarcely do less. The Scotch exulted in what they called "Doug- 1307 las's larder," the feat of one of Bruce's adherents who surprised an English garrison in a church, slew them all, and, being unable to hold the castle, threw the bodies of the English upon a pile of wood and burnt the whole. Bruce, unable to withstand the forces sent against him, had to take refuge in the woods. But being a man of great military capacity and powers of leadership he rallied and made head again. Once more Edward heard the call of royal duty and obeyed; but his last hour had come. He was suffering from a mortal malady. Un- 1307 dauntedly he struggled with it and rode at the head of his army till he could ride but two miles a day, and at last was obliged to take to his litter. So, on the march, and still eagerly pressing forward, he ended the life 1307 which had been one long march of duty. His dying words were an expression of faith in God, with a command that his heart should be carried to the Holy Land, to an expedition for the relief of which he had looked forward as the blessed end of his long life of toil. He enjoined his son to carry his bones at the head of the army into Scotland.

Richelieu in his day crushed feudal anarchy and installed order in its room.

life, and the end was decay.

His work did not decay.

But he did not call forth
Edward I. called forth life.
Hard by the beautiful effigy of

Eleanor at Westminster her husband rests in a severely
simple tomb. Pass it not by for its simplicity; few
tombs hold nobler dust.

CHAPTER IX

EDWARD II

BORN 1284; SUCCEEDED 1307; DEPOSED AND DIED 1327

INSTEAD of carrying his father's bones onwards at

the head of the army, and completing his father's work, Edward II. soon turned away from the affairs of Scotland to his pleasures, and left Bruce time to repair his reverses and seat himself firmly on the throne.

After

an interval of seven years, and when the troubles of his reign had begun, he led an army which his chief barons refused to join, and which could have no confidence in 1314 its commander, to total defeat at Bannockburn. So

ended for many a day the hope of a united Britain. In place of it came centuries of mutual hatred, reciprocal havoc, devastating war, border brigandage, and common insecurity; of disunion in Scotland herself, the Lowland kingdom not having strength to subdue and incorporate the Highlands; of diplomatic vassalage of Scotland to France; of retarded civilization on both sides, but especially on the side of the weaker kingdom. If destiny had a partial compensation for these evils in store, it was beyond the ken either of Plantagenet or of Bruce. The game which Robert Bruce had played in Scotland his brother Edward attempted to play in Ireland, but after filling the island with havoc and tasting of Celtic inconstancy, he was encountered by a better commander