ROBERT THE BRUCE.
“They thought to die in the mêlée,
Or else to set their country free.”
Not yet may “our stern alarums change for peaceful meetings, our dreadful marches to delightful measures.” Grim-visaged war must still be our portion, if our pageant is to depict the outstanding landmarks in our nation’s story. The victories of peace are for the future; now we must hear again the clash of arms, and share once more the joy of victory and the anguish of defeat.
We are still in Scotland, where a successor to Wallace has arisen even before his scattered limbs have rotted away. The new champion is the grandson of that Bruce whom Edward set aside in favour of Baliol. His father, in the old days, was a friend of “Longshanks,” and young Robert Bruce has been trained in all the arts of war and the exercises of chivalry under the eye of the man whose mortal enemy he is destined to be. He comes upon the scene in the dark days succeeding the judicial murder of Wallace, in those bitter months when England’s iron grip is on Scotland. He sees with deep indignation the wretched condition of his countrymen, and cautiously and secretly lays his plans for throwing off the English yoke. He makes a compact with his friend Comyn, who too has royal blood in his veins; but Comyn is a traitor, and reveals the plot to the English king. Bruce receives warning, and ere long he settles accounts with Comyn. In the church of the Gray Friars at Dumfries the two meet face to face. Angry words pass, and Bruce strikes down his treacherous friend on the very steps of the altar. He rushes outside to his comrades. “I doubt I have slain Comyn!” he cries. “You doubt!” says one of them, “I mak’ siccar;” and entering the church he dispatches the unhappy man with many fierce blows.
And now the Bruce has taken the plunge. There is no turning back; he must go forward to a crown, or suffer the fate of Wallace wight. A few faithful friends stand by him, and he hastens to Scone, the coronation place of Scottish kings. A friendly bishop lends him robes, the abbot provides a chair, and the statue of some saint is temporarily despoiled of its circlet to provide a crown.
The news of the outbreak speedily reaches Edward, and throws him into ungovernable rage. He swears that he will never rest until he has hanged, drawn, and quartered the presumptuous knave who has forsworn his oaths and seized the crown. Edward’s nut-brown hair is snow-white now, and his once mighty arm is weak with age, but his determined spirit burns as fiercely as of yore. An advance-guard is pushed on with all speed, and near Perth it comes into touch with the Bruce, who barely escapes from it.
The Bruce must now follow in the footsteps of Wallace, and wander, a hunted fugitive, over many a league of forest and hill. How true now seem the words of his wife at their hasty and impromptu coronation: “Alas! we are but king and queen of the May, such as boys crown with flowers and rushes in their summer sports.” Deserted and distressed, he lives the life of an outlaw, shooting his own venison and catching his own fish. But he is not sad and gloomy, as Wallace was wont to be. He cheers his little company by many a good-humoured sally and the recital of heroic deeds. Summer passes, and the pageantry of autumn descends upon the woods; but still he is a king without a throne, a wanderer without a home. The wild life of a hunted fugitive may not be borne during the dread winter by the ladies of his company, so he sends them with many a dark foreboding of evil to the care of his brother, and then takes ship for the remote island of Rathlin, off the north Irish coast, where he winters safe from his foes.
Here, in his island retreat, bitter news reaches him. His wife and daughters have been seized and imprisoned in England. His brother and his relatives have been captured and hanged, his estates have been forfeited and given to others, and the Pope has driven him out of the Church for his sacrilege at Dumfries. No wonder the Bruce sits under his juniper tree “steeped to the lips in misery.”