Reflections

There can be no doubt that this treaty was highly unpopular in England. The peace was termed ignominious, and the marriage a base alliance; the treaty itself, in the framing of which the queen and Mortimer had a principal share,* although undoubtedly ratified in parliament, was not generally promulgated, and does not appear amongst the national records and muniments of the time; and when the renunciation of the superiority over Scotland, and the restoration of the fatal stone, came to be publicly known, the populace in London rose in a riotous manner, and would not suffer that venerable emblem of the conquest of Edward the First to be removed.f Yet although it wounded the national pride, the peace, considering the exhausted state of England, the extreme youth of the king, the impoverishment of the exchequer by a long war, and the great superiority of such military leaders as Bruce, Randolph, and Douglas, to any English commanders who could be opposed to them, was a necessary and prudent measure, imperiously dictated by the circumstances of the times.

To Bruce, on the other hand, the peace was in every respect a glorious one; but it was wise and seasonable as well as glorious. Robert anxiously desired to settle his kingdom in tranquillity. Although not to be called an old man, the hardships of war had broken a constitution naturally of great strength, and had brought on a premature old age, attended with a deep-seated and incurable disease, thought to be of the nature of leprosy.

Upon his single life hung the prosperity of his kingdom, and the interests of his family. His daughter, the only child of his first marriage, was dead. During the negotiations for the treaty of Northampton, Elizabeth, his second wife, had followed her to the grave; his gallant brothers, partly on the scaffold, and partly on the .field, had died without issue; his only son was an infant, and his grandson a boy of ten years old, who had lost both his parents. In these circumstances, peace was a signal blessing to the nation, and a joyful relief to himself. The complete independence of Scotland, for which the people of that land had obstinately sustained a war of thirty-two years' duration, was at last amply acknowledged, and established on the firmest basis; and England, with her powerful fleets, and superb armies, her proud nobility, and her wealthy exchequer, was, by superior courage and military talent, compelled to renounce for ever her schemes of unjust aggression, In the conduct of this war, and in its glorious termination, Bruce stood alone, and shared the glory with no one. He had raised the" spirit of his people to an ascendency over their enemies, which is acknowledged by the English historians themselves; and in all the great military transactions of the war, we can discern the presence of his inventive and presiding genius. He was indeed nobly assisted by Douglas and Randolph; but it was he that had first marked their military talents, and it was under his eye that they had grown up into that maturity of excellence, which found nothing that could cope with them in the martial nobility of England. Having thus accomplished the great object of his life, and warned, by intimations which could not be mistaken, that a mortal disease had fixed upon him, the king retired to his palace at Cardross, on the eastern shore of the Clyde. His amusements, in the intervals of disease, were kingly, and his charities extensive. He built ships, and recreated himself by sailing; he devoted himself to architecture and gardening, improving his palace and orchard; he kept a lion for his diversion, and, when his health permitted, delighted in hawking; he entertained his nobility in a style of rude and abundant hospitality, and the poor received regular supplier by the king's order.