On June 7, 1329, Bruce died and was buried at Dunfermline; his heart, by his order, was carried by Douglas towards the Holy Land, and when Douglas fell in a battle with the Moors in Spain, the heart was brought back by Sir Simon Lockhart of the Lee.  The later career of Bruce, after he had been excommunicated, is that of the foremost knight and most sagacious man of action who ever wore the crown of Scotland.  The staunchness with which the clergy and estates disregarded papal fulminations (indeed under William the Lion they had treated an interdict as waste-paper) indicated a kind of protestant tendency to independence of the Holy See.

Bruce’s inclusion of representatives of the Burghs in the first regular Scottish Parliament (at Cambuskenneth in 1326) was a great step forward in the constitutional existence of the country.  The king, in Scotland, was expected to “live of his own,” but in 1326 the expenses of the war with England compelled Bruce to seek permission for taxation.

CHAPTER IX.  DECADENCE AND DISASTERS—­REIGN OF DAVID II.

The heroic generation of Scotland was passing off the stage.  The King was a child.  The forfeiture by Bruce of the lands of hostile or treacherous lords, and his bestowal of the estates on his partisans, had made the disinherited nobles the enemies of Scotland, and had fed too full the House of Douglas.  As the star of Scotland was thus clouded—­she had no strong man for a King during the next ninety years—­the sun of England rose red and glorious under a warrior like Edward III.  The Scottish nobles in many cases ceased to be true to their proud boast that they would never submit to England.  A very brief summary of the wretched reign of David II. must here suffice.

First, the son of John Balliol, Edward, went to the English Court, and thither thronged the disinherited and forfeited lords, arranging a raid to recover their lands.  Edward III., of course, connived at their preparations.

After Randolph’s death (July 20, 1332), when Mar—­a sister’s son of Bruce—­was Regent, the disinherited lords, under Balliol, invaded Scotland, and Mar, with young Randolph, Menteith, and a bastard of Bruce, “Robert of Carrick,” leading a very great host, fell under the shafts of the English archers of Umfraville, Wake, the English Earl of Atholl, Talbot, Ferrers, and Zouche, at Dupplin, on the Earn (August 12, 1332).  Rolled up by arrows loosed on the flanks of their charging columns, they fell, and their dead bodies lay in heaps as tall as a lance.

On September 24, Edward Balliol was crowned King at Scone.  Later, Andrew Murray, perhaps a son of the Murray who had been Wallace’s companion-in-arms, was taken, and Balliol acknowledged Edward III. as his liege-lord at Roxburgh.  In December the second son of Randolph, with Archibald, the new Regent, brother of the great Black Douglas, drove Balliol, flying in his shirt, from Annan across the Border.