startled at this, and says, "This King of Scotland was obliged to stand at the bar like a private person, to answer the accusation.” Imagine then what the proud Scotch people felt. themselves 23. Just at this time Edward had got into a quarrel with the King of France, and the Scotch were summoned, as his vassals, to follow him to the war. This, again, was quite a new They ally thing for an English king to demand, and we may be with France. sure the Scotch were not going to obey. On the contrary, they and their King John made a treaty with the King of France, promising to help him fight the English. From this time onward, for several centuries, there was an alliance between France and Scotland, and both constantly helped each other against the English. The way the Scotch helped the French at this time, was by pouring over the border into Northumberland, and burning, ravaging, and plundering just as the Danes used to do. 24. Edward very soon gave up the French affair, and came to Scotland. The Scotch lords now made Balliol send Edward a writing, renouncing his allegiance, and saying that, in consequence of the outrages and insults he had received, he would no longer be his vassal, nor come to him when summoned. To which Edward replied, "Ha! the foolish felon ! is he such a fool? If he will not come to us, we will go to him." And he did go, taking with him what was in those days a large army-30,000 footsoldiers and 5000 mounted men-at-arms. He found very little difficulty in conquering the Scotch. He besieged and took the castle and town of Berwick, which is just on the borders. Afterwards there was another fight at Dunbar, and a siege of Edinburgh Castle; but that was all the resistance worth speaking of. It was a complete conquest. 1296. All the country submitted. The poor puppet, John Conquest of Balliol, was deposed. He had to appear before the Scotland. conqueror in a most humiliating way, clothed in a mean dress, without royal robes or ornaments, and, instead of a sword, carrying in his hand a harmless white wand. He was then degraded from the kingdom and sent to England, where he was kept for a time in custody; but not long afterwards he was allowed to leave the country in peace, and go to his estates in France, where he lived quietly for the rest of his days. 25. Edward was no cruel tyrant; he had no wish to ill-use either Balliol or the Scotch, but he did fully mean to be master. He thoroughly frightened the people by allowing a most cruel massacre after the taking of Berwick, but when once the land had submitted he showed himself merciful and just (only they did not want his mercy or his justice). He gave free pardon to all who had rebelled, as he called it, and he endeavoured to establish order and peace everywhere. But he took away from Scotland some things which the Scotch dearly prized. 26. The most important of these was a thing which, to look at, we might not think was worth much. In Edward the Confessor's chapel in Westminster Abbey are to be seen two These are called the Coronation Chairs, stone. ancient chairs, one of them especially being very old The sacred and worn. and in one of them the King or Queen of England always sits to be crowned. If we look at the seat of that one we see a rough block of stone, not carved or sculptured, not beautiful marble, merely a rude block of common limestone. That stone Edward brought from Scotland, and the loss of it nearly broke the hearts of the Scotch. They tried again and again to get it back, but the Londoners would never give it up. We may suppose, therefore, that it had a value not of its own. And indeed it has a strange and poetical history, which makes us feel even now, as we look at it, that it is more precious than the choicest piece of new or polished marble. This stone was called in Scotland the Stone of Destiny, and on it all the Scottish sovereigns had sate to be crowned and consecrated. In all times, in the early history of almost all people, we hear of sacred stones. We often read in the Bible of stones being reared up as memorials of remarkable events. This was a sacred stone of the early Scotch people. They believed that it was the very stone which Jacob took for his pillow when he saw the ladder and the angels. They told how it had been carried from Bethel to Egypt, from Egypt to Spain, from Spain to Ireland, from Ireland to Scotland. It was a magical stone, and in old times it had done wonderful things. The hearts of the Scotch people clung to the sacred stone. 27. Edward took it away. He had already hung up in the Confessor's chapel the golden crown of the Welsh prince; now he placed there the royal stone of Scotland. The other things which Edward brought away from Scotland, even a precious fragment of the true cross, which was called the "Holy Rood," were afterwards given back to the Scotch. They tried and strove to get their precious stone back; but no, " the people of London would by no means whatever allow that to depart from themselves." There was an old prophecy in Scotland, that wherever the stone was the Scotch should be supreme; and when, 300 years after this time, a Scotch king sate upon it, and was crowned King of England in Westminster Abbey, the Scotch had the pleasure of thinking the prophecy was fulfilled. When we look at that old stone, though we need not believe that Jacob's head ever lay upon it, when we try to think of the generations and generations of people who have gazed upon it with reverencethe wild Irish of old, the half wild and patriotic Scotch, the brave and serious English; of the sovereigns who have been enthroned on it, from the old savage times, when they still thought the stone would groan aloud if a false pretender sate upon it, down to our good Queen Victoria, we cannot help feeling, like the Scotch and the Londoners of old, that it is too precious a thing to be lightly parted with. LECTURE XXVI.-SCOTLAND VICTORIOUS. Wallace. Battle of Stirling Bridge. The second conquest. Battle of Falkirk. Robert Bruce. His coronation. Death of Edward I. Battle of Bannockburn. 1. WHILE Edward was in Scotland he made as many as possible of the great lords and bishops come forward and do homage to him again. The Scotch seem to have thought nothing of making and breaking oaths of this kind. Some little time afterwards the same ceremony was repeated, and, as Baker says, "it seems swearing of fealty was with the Scots but a ceremony without substance, as good as nothing; for this is now the third time they swore fealty to King Edward, yet all did not serve to make them loyal." When the king left Scotland he took a great many of the Scotch nobles with him, and the others who were left at home were carefully watched, lest they should incite the people to rebel; but after his return to England things did not go on very well. The English began to build castles and fortresses, and did many other things to offend and insult the Scotch. There was a great deal of strife, discontent, and confusion, and the Scotch people only wanted a spirited and clever leader to help them rise up against the foreign oppressors. 2. Though Edward had taken away or silenced all the natural heads of the people, such a leader soon made his appearance. His name was William Wallace; a name very dear to the Scotch to this day. Wallace was neither a Wallace. great lord nor quite a man of the people. He was rather in the middle rank. An old ballad says "he was cummyn of Gentil They say he was wonderfully tall and handsome, strong and brave. His terrible sword was fit for an archangel rather than for a man. He was, no doubt, a remarkably clever man also ; S just the leader the Scotch needed. The English contrived to affront and insult him, and at last, when he had already been made very furious, they ended by burning down his house and killing his wife. Wallace now openly revolted, and soon collected a band of followers, with whom he began to harass the English. No one can help taking an interest in a man who is defending his native land against foreign oppressors, and though the English of those days thought him a "pestilent ruffian," a robber and marauder, we are all agreed now in sympathizing with him, and admiring him as a true hero and patriot. We have also another reason for admiring him, and for thinking he did (or at any rate greatly helped) a wonderful work, a greater work even than that of freeing his country would have been; a work which in the end has changed the whole face of Europe, and altered all modern history. 3. Up till this time, ever since the feudal system had been fully established, people had thought more of knights on horseback than of anything else. A knight, and his horse, Knights and foot-soldiers. and his armour could only be withstood by another knight with horse and armour. Both horse and armour were very strong and very expensive; the knight himself was brave, skilful, and highly trained. A leader who had a great many of these knights was likely to conquer any one who had not so many. The rest of the army counted for almost nothing. Two or three such knights would scatter a whole troop of light-armed and inexperienced foot-soldiers. Thus the knights and the nobles grew prouder and prouder. We saw before how they came to call the poorer men who fought on foot rascals," and that " no great account was made of them." The rich and the poor grew more and more divided; the rich were insolent, the poor were depressed and slavish. 66 4. Now Wallace, when he began to resist the English, had very few nobles or knights on his side; many who at first seemed inclined to take part with him soon fell away, and submitted to Edward again; almost all his people belonged to the peasantry. And the grand thing he did was to show that they were of some account, that they could stand up against the knights, and could conquer them in defence of their freedom. In other parts of the world, in Switzerland and in Flanders, and perhaps because they heard what Wallace and his men had done, the lower orders— the burghers and the peasants-began to find they could hold their own against the barons and knights. By degrees the rich grew less proud; the poor grew more bold; till they began to |