His ardour steadily increased. After the surrender of Comyn and his adherents in February 1303–4, he threw himself heartily into the pursuit of Wallace. On March 3, Edward wrote to 'his loyal and faithful Robert de Brus, Earl of Carrick, Sir John de Segrave, and their company,' applauding their diligence, begging them to complete the business they had begun so well, and urging them, 'as the cloak is well made, also to make the hood.' Wallace and Sir Simon Fraser were hotly pursued southwards, and defeated at Peebles within a week.
About this time Bruce must have received news of the death of his father, probably not unexpected. On April 4, 1304, he was at Hatfield in Essex, whence he wrote to Sir William de Hamilton, the Chancellor, asking him to direct quickly the necessary inquisitions of his father's lands in Essex, Middlesex and Huntingdon, as he wished to go to the King with them to do homage. On June 14, having done homage and fealty, he was served heir. The succession to the paternal inheritance was happily achieved.
Meantime, on his return north, Bruce had found Edward in hot eagerness to commence the siege of Stirling, and worked with the energy of gratitude that looks towards favours to come. He undertook the special task of getting up the King's engines to Stirling. On April 16, the King wrote him thanks for sending up some engines, and gave particular instructions about 'the great engine of Inverkip,' which appears to have been unmanageable for want of 'a waggon fit to carry the frame.' Bruce seems to have been at Inverkip and Glasgow, and wherever else any of the thirteen engines were lagging on the road to Stirling. His energy operated in congenial harmony with the fiery expedition of the King.
Yet there was something in the background of all this enthusiastic service. On June 11, only three days before 'his loyal and faithful Robert de Brus' did homage and fealty to Edward on succession to his father, Bruce met Bishop Lamberton at Cambuskenneth and formed with him a secret alliance for mutual aid and defence 'against all persons whatsoever.' Seeing dangers ahead, and wishing to fortify themselves against 'the attempts of their rivals,' they engaged to assist each other to the utmost of their power with counsel and material forces in all their affairs; 'that neither of them would undertake any important enterprise without consultation with the other'; and that 'they would warn each other against any impending danger, and do their best to avert the same from each other.' No particular motives or objects, of course, are specified. But the Bishop may have foreseen the likelihood of an invasion of English ecclesiastics; and Bruce would not be slow to perceive the possible value of the moral support of the Church, and of the material aid derivable from the men and lands of the religious houses of the wide episcopate of St Andrews. At such a moment neither party would affect to forget the Bruce's royal pretensions. We shall hear of this bond again.
Stirling surrendered on July 20, the last of the Scottish fortresses that held out against Edward. Wallace, the last centre of opposition, was a fugitive, dogged by emissaries of the English King. In March next year, Bruce was with the King at Westminster, petitioning him for the lands recently held by Sir Ingram de Umfraville in Carrick—a petition substantially granted—and he attended Edward's parliament in Lent. It is hardly any stretch of probability to believe that he was present, in August, at the trial and execution of the illustrious Wallace—the man that, above all others, paved the way for his elevation to the Scottish throne.
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Bruce was now in his thirty-second year. From his twenty-second year onwards, through the ten years' struggle of Wallace and Comyn, he was two parts of the time the active henchman of Edward, and during the other part he is not known to have performed any important service for Scotland. His action during this period—the period of vigorous manhood, of generous impulses and unselfish enthusiasms—contrasts lamentably with the splendour of Wallace's achievement and endeavour, and gravely with the bearing of Comyn. One looks for patriotism and heroism; one finds not a spark of either, but only opportunism, deliberate and ignoble, not to say timid—the conduct of a 'spotted and inconstant man.' Yet Bruce was tenaciously constant to the grand object of his ambition. In the light of his kingly career this early period has puzzled the historians very strangely; but one cannot affect to be surprised that the friendliest critic is compelled to pronounce the simple enumeration of the facts to be, 'in truth, a humiliating record.'