Mowbray accepted his freedom with gratitude, and gladly set forth with his unhappy charge to meet his sovereign. Expectation of Edward's approach had been the reason of his withdrawing his herald from the camp of Bruce, and though the king did not arrive time enough to save Stirling, Mowbray yet hoped he might still be continuing his promised march. This anticipation the Southron's loyalty would not allow him to impart to Bruce, and he bade that generous prince adieu, with the full belief of soon returning to find him the vanquished of Edward.
At the decline of day Bruce returned to his camp, to pass the night in the field with his soldiers, intending next morning to give his last orders to the detachments which he meant to send out under the command of Lennox and Douglas, to disperse themselves over the border counties, and there keep station till that peace should be signed by England which he was determined, by unabated hostilities, to compel.
Having taken these measures for the security of his kingdom and the establishment of his own happiness, he had just returned to his tent on the banks of the Bannockburn when Grimsby, his now faithful attendant, conducted an armed knight into his presence. The light of the lamp which stood on the table, streaming full on the face of the stranger, discovered to the king his English friend, the intrepid Montgomery. With an exclamation of glad surprise Bruce would have clasped him in his arms; but Montgomery dropping on his knee, exclaimed, "Receive a subject as well as a friend, victorious and virtuous prince! I have forsworn the vassalage of the Plantagenets; and thus, without title or land, with only a faithful heart, Gilbert Hambledon comes to vow himself yours and Scotland's forever."
Bruce raised him from the ground, and welcoming him with the warm embrace of friendship, inquired the cause of so extraordinary an abjuration of his legal sovereign. "No light matter," observed the king, "could have so wrought upon my noble Montgomery!"
"Montgomery no more!" replied the ear, with indignant eagerness; "when I threw the insignia of my earldom at the feet of the unjust Edward, I told him that I would lay the saw to the root of the nobility I had derived from his house, and cut it through; that I would sooner leave my posterity without titles and without wealth, than deprive them of real honor.** I have done as I said! And yet I come not without a treasure, for the sacred corpse of William Wallace is now in my bark, floating on the waves of the Forth!"
**This event is perpetuated in the crest of the noble family of
Hamilton in Scotland.
The subjugation of England would hardly have been so welcome to Bruce as this intelligence. He received it with an eloquent though unutterable look of gratitude. Hambledon continued: "On the tyrant summoning the peers of England to follow him to the destruction of Scotland, Gloucester got excused under a plea of illness, and I could not but show a disinclination to obey. This occasioned some remarks from Edward respecting my known attachment to the Scottish cause, and they were so couched as to draw from me this honest answer; my heart would not, for the wealth of the world, permit me to join in the projected invasion, since I had seen the spot in my own country where a most inordinate ambition had cut down the flower of all knighthood, because he was a Scot who would not sell his birthright! The king left me in wrath and threatened to make me recant my words—I as proudly declared I would maintain them. Next morning, being in waiting on the prince, I entered his chamber, and found John le de Spencer (the coward who so basely insulted Wallace on the day of his condemnation); he was sitting with his highness. On my offering the services due from my office, this worthless minion turned on me, and accused me of having declined joining the army for the sole purpose of executing some plot in London, devised between me and my Scottish partisans for the subversion of the English monarchy. I denied the charge. He enforced it with oaths, and I spurned his allegations. The prince, who believed him, furiously gave me the lie, and commanded me as a traitor to leave his presence. I refused to stir an inch till I made the base heart of Le de Spencer retract his falsehood. The coward took courage on his master's support, and drawing his sword upon me, in language that would blister my tongue to repeat, threatened to compel my departure. He struck me on the face with his weapon. The arms of his prince could not then save him; I thrust him through the body, and he fell. Edward ran on me with his dagger, but I wrested it from him. Then it was that, I reply to his menaces, I revoked my fealty to a sovereign I abhorred, a prince I despised. Leaving his presence before the fluctuations of so versatile a mind could fix upon seizing me, I hastened to Highgate, to convey away the body of our friend from its brief sanctuary. The same night I embarked it and myself on board a ship of my own, and am now at your feet, brave and just king!—no longer Montgomery, but a true Scot in heart and loyalty."
"And as a kinsman, generous Hambledon!" returned Bruce, "I receive and will portion thee. My paternal lands of Cadzow, on the Clyde, shall be thine forever; and may thy posterity be as worthy of the inheritance as their ancestor is of all my love and confidence."
Hambledon, having received his new sovereign's directions concerning the disembarkation of those sacred remains, which the young king declared he should welcome as the pledge of Heaven to bless his victories with peace, returned to the haven, where Wallace rested in that sleep which even the voice of friendship could not disturb.
At the hour of the midnight watch, the trumpets of approaching heralds resounded without the camp. Bruce hastened to the council-tent to receive the now anticipated tidings. The communications of Hambledon had given him reason to expect another struggle for his kingdom, and the message of the trumpets declared it might be a mortal one.