Edward marched in person against the Scotch (1296) and speedily put down what he regarded as a rebellion. He declared that Balliol had forfeited his fief through treason, and that consequently the English king had become the immediate lord of the Scotch nobles, whom he forced to do him homage. He emphasized his claim by carrying off the famous Stone of Scone, upon which the kings of Scotland had been crowned for ages. Continued resistance led Edward to attempt to incorporate Scotland with England in the same way that he had treated Wales. This was the beginning of three hundred years of intermittent war between England and Scotland, which ended only when a Scotch king, James VI, succeeded to the English throne in 1603 as James I. [Sidenote: Scotland gains its independence under Robert Bruce.] [Sidenote: Battle of Bannockburn, 1314.] That Scotland was able to maintain her independence was mainly due to Robert Bruce, a national hero who succeeded in bringing both the nobility and the people under his leadership. Edward I died, old and worn out, in 1307, when on his way north to put down a rising under Bruce, and left the task of dealing with the Scotch to his incompetent son, Edward II. The Scotch acknowledged Bruce as their king and decisively defeated Edward II in the great battle of Bannockburn, the most famous conflict in Scottish history. Nevertheless, the English refused to acknowledge the independence of Scotland until forced to do so in 1328. [Sidenote: The Scottish nation differs from the English.] In the course of their struggles with England the Scotch people of the Lowlands had become more closely welded together, and the independence of Scotland, although it caused much bloodshed, first and last, served to develop certain permanent differences between the little Scotch nation and the rest of the English race. The peculiarities of the people north of the Tweed have been made familiar by the writings of gifted Scotchmen like Burns, Scott, and Stevenson. [Sidenote: Growth of the power of Parliament.]