of the Bruce, who increased in numbers after the murder of Comyn.  Among the great families thus alienated from the cause of Scotland were the Highlanders of Argyll and the Isles, some of the men of Badenach, and certain Galloway clans.  But that this opposition was personal, and not racial, is shown by the fact that, from the first, some of these Highlanders were loyal to Bruce, e.g. Sir Nigel Campbell and Angus Og.  We shall see, further, that after the first jealousies caused by Comyn’s death and Bruce’s success had passed away, the men of Argyll and the Isles took a more prominent part on the Scottish side.  In December, 1307, Bruce routed John Comyn, the successor of his old rival, at Slains, on the Aberdeenshire coast, and in the following May, when Comyn had obtained some slight English assistance, he inflicted a final defeat upon him at Inverurie.  The power of the Comyns in their hereditary earldom of Buchan had now been suppressed, and King Robert turned his attention to their allies in the south.  In the autumn of 1308, he himself defeated Alexander of Lorn and subdued the district of Argyll, his brother Edward reduced Galloway to subjection, and Douglas, along with Randolph, Earl of Moray, was successful in Tweeddale.  Thus, within three years from the death of Comyn, Bruce had broken the power of the great families, whose enmity against him had been aroused by that event.  One year later the other great misfortune, which had been brought upon him by the same cause, was removed by an act which is important evidence at once of the strength of the anti-English feeling in the country, and of the confidence which Bruce had inspired.  On the 24th February, 1309-10, the clergy of Scotland met at Dundee and made a solemn declaration[48] of fealty to King Robert as their lawful king.  Scotland was thus united in its struggle for independence under King Robert I.

It now remained to attack the English garrisons who held the castles of Scotland.  An invasion conducted by Edward II in 1310 proved fruitless, and the English king returned home to enter on a long quarrel with the Lords Ordainers, and to see his favourite, Gaveston, first exiled and then put to death.  While the attention of the rulers of England was thus occupied, Bruce, for the first time since Wallace’s inroad of 1297, carried the war into the enemy’s country, invading the north of England both in 1311 and in 1312.  Meanwhile the strongholds of the country were passing out of the English power.  Linlithgow was recovered in 1311; Perth in January, 1312-13; and Roxburgh a month later.  The romantic capture of the castle of Edinburgh, by Randolph, Earl of Moray, in March, 1313, is one of the classical stories of Scottish history, and in the summer of the same year, King Robert restored the Scottish rule in the Isle of Man.  In November, 1313, only Stirling Castle remained in English hands, and Edward Bruce rashly agreed to raise the siege on condition that the garrison should surrender if they were not relieved by June 24th, 1314.  Edward II determined to make a heroic effort to maintain this last vestige of English conquest, and his attempt to do so has become irrevocably associated with the Field of Bannockburn.