Robert Bruce was the grandson of the claimant of the Scotch throne; his grandfather had been an English judge, his father a constant friend of Edward. It was only by marriage that the family had acquired the estates of Carrick and Annandale. He was therefore to all intents and purposes an Englishman, or rather a Norman Baron, possessed of that peculiar characteristic of the race which rendered it in fact a race of adventurers, with the constant hope of winning great things before their minds. The instances of Norman Barons who had won earldoms, kingdoms and empires, were too numerous not to have had effect upon aspiring members of the race. Bruce had up to this time played a somewhat vacillating game, but on the whole, perhaps because of his feud with Balliol, he had remained faithful to Edward. He seems now to have thought his opportunity had arrived. It may perhaps have been the King’s growing infirmities that encouraged him. At all events, early in February 1306, he murdered in the church of Dumfries Comyn, who, in accordance with the interpretation of the law which Edward had recognized, stood next to the Balliols in succession to the Scotch throne, and who, since he had last submitted to Edward, had been true to him. Bruce then, joined by a few nobles, raised the standard of revolt. He proceeded at once to Scone, and there, in March, was crowned by Wishart and other of Edward’s Commissioners. This unexpected insurrection from those whom he had trusted roused Edward to extreme anger. With great pomp, at a meeting at Westminster, he knighted his son, and took a solemn oath to avenge John Comyn’s death. Carlisle was the point of rendezvous, but already Bruce had been defeated at Methven near Perth by Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, and was wandering barefoot and in misery among the hills and woods of the country. He was reduced to demand the pity of the King, but was refused; and a severe ordinance was issued that all abettors of the murder of Comyn should be hanged, and that all those who assisted Bruce should be imprisoned. The ordinance was carried out with severity. Nigel Bruce, two Seatons, the Earl of Athole and Simon Fraser, were all executed, and the Countess of Buchan, who had crowned Bruce, was imprisoned, with ironical cruelty, in a crown-shaped cage. But Bruce himself was not taken, and issuing from his fastnesses, he inflicted many losses by surprise upon the English. He even in his turn defeated the Earl of Pembroke, and shortly after the Earl of Gloucester; and Edward was rousing himself to attack him, though scarcely able to mount his horse, when he died upon the march. [Sidenote: Constitutional importance of the reign.]