The marriage of King Edward with Margaret of France had taken place, as had also his son's betrothal to Isabel (September, 1299), and two little incursions into Scotland had produced no other result than an intervention on the part of Pope Boniface VIII. in favor of the Scotch, by virtue of the rights which he claimed over that kingdom. Although haughtily refusing to recognize this strange pretension, the King of England had three times granted a truce to the insurgents. The third had just expired, when the treaty of Montreuil, made between England and France on the 30th of May, 1303, gave up Guienne to Edward, who abandoned his Flemish allies as Philip the Fair did his Scottish allies. Freed from care on the score of continental affairs, Edward, on the day following the ratification of the treaty, marched into Scotland. He was already at Edinburgh on the 4th of June, and his progress across the northern counties resembled a triumphal march; all the fortresses opened their gates; Buchan Castle alone remained closed. While the English were attacking, Sir Thomas Maule, the governor, was marching up and down the ramparts, with a handkerchief in his hand, wiping off the dust raised by the battering-rams. On the twentieth day of the siege he was struck with an arrow, and, when dying, stigmatized the soldiers as cowards, who were asking permission of him to surrender. {262} Scarcely had the valiant champion breathed his last when his castle was given up to the English forces. The king established himself in winter quarters in the abbey of Dunfermline, and it was there that the Scotch barons came to negotiate for peace; each one had drawn up his own conditions. Wallace had disappeared since the battle of Falkirk; the noblemen had supplanted him in the government of the country, which he had delivered without their aid. The king caused a proclamation to be made that the outlaw should surrender at discretion. Wallace, however, took no notice, but remained in the mountains. The Castle of Stirling now alone offered any resistance, in spite of the injunctions of the Scottish Parliament assembled by Edward. Sir William Oliphant, who commanded it, was compelled to surrender on the 26th of July, 1304.