of Buchan, who had set the crown on Bruce’s head, in a cage or open chamber built for the purpose in one of the towers of Berwick.  At the solemn feast which celebrated his son’s knighthood Edward vowed on the swan which formed the chief dish at the banquet to devote the rest of his days to exact vengeance from the murderer himself.  But even at the moment of the vow Bruce was already flying for his life to the western islands.  “Henceforth” he said to his wife at their coronation “thou art Queen of Scotland and I King.”  “I fear” replied Mary Bruce “we are only playing at royalty like children in their games.”  The play was soon turned into bitter earnest.  A small English force under Aymer de Valence sufficed to rout the disorderly levies which gathered round the new monarch, and the flight of Bruce left his followers at Edward’s mercy.  Noble after noble was sent to the block.  The Earl of Athole pleaded kindred with royalty.  “His only privilege,” burst forth the king, “shall be that of being hanged on a higher gallows than the rest.”  Knights and priests were strung up side by side by the English justiciaries; while the wife and daughters of Robert Bruce were flung into Edward’s prisons.  Bruce himself had offered to capitulate to Prince Edward.  But the offer only roused the old king to fury.  “Who is so bold,” he cried, “as to treat with our traitors without our knowledge?” and rising from his sick-bed he led his army northwards in the summer of 1307 to complete the conquest.  But the hand of death was upon him, and in the very sight of Scotland the old man breathed his last at Burgh-upon-Sands.

Book IV
the parliament
1307-1461

AUTHORITIES FOR BOOK IV

For Edward the Second we have three important contemporaries:  Thomas de la More, Trokelowe’s Annals, and the life by a monk of Malmesbury printed by Hearne.  The sympathies of the first are with the King, those of the last two with the Barons.  Murimuth’s short Chronicle is also contemporary.  John Barbour’s “Bruce,” the great legendary storehouse for his hero’s adventures, is historically worthless.

Important as it is, the reign of Edward the Third is by no means fortunate in its annalists.  The concluding part of the Chronicle of Walter of Hemingford or Heminburgh seems to have been jotted down as news of the passing events reached its author:  it ends at the battle of Crecy.  Hearne has published another contemporary account, that of Robert of Avesbury, which closes in 1356.  A third account by Knyghton, a canon of Leicester, will be found in the collection of Twysden.  At the end of this century and the beginning of the next the annals which had been carried on in the Abbey of St. Albans were thrown together by Walsingham in the “Historia Anglicana” which bears his name, a compilation whose history may be found in the prefaces to the “Chronica Monasterii S. Albani” issued in the Rolls Series.