[Footnote 47: Bruce had married, 1st, Isabella, daughter of the 10th Earl of Mar, by whom he had a daughter, Marjorie, and 2nd, in 1302, Elizabeth de Burgh, daughter of the Earl of Ulster.] [Footnote 48: Nat. MSS. ii. 12, No. XVII. The original is preserved in the Register House.] [Footnote 49: Pinkerton suggests that King Robert adopted this arrangement because he was unable to trust the Highlanders, but this is unlikely, as their leader, Angus Og, had been consistently faithful to him throughout.] CHAPTER V EDWARD III AND SCOTLAND 1328-1399 Almost immediately after the conclusion of the Treaty of Northampton, the conditions of government in England and Scotland were reversed. Since the death of Edward I, Scotland, under a strong king, had gained by the weakness of the English sovereign; now England, under the energetic rule of Edward III, was to profit by the death of King Robert and by the succession of a minor. On the 7th June, 1329, King Robert died (probably a leper) at his castle of Cardross, on the Clyde, and left the Scottish throne to his five-year-old son, David II. In October of the following year the young Edward III of England threw off the yoke of the Mortimers and established his personal rule, and came almost immediately into conflict with Scotland. The Scottish regent was Randolph or Ranulph, Earl of Moray, the companion of Bruce and the Black Douglas[50] in the exploits of the great war. Possibly because Edward III had afforded protection to the Pretender, Edward Balliol, the eldest son of John Balliol, and had received him at the English court, Randolph refused to carry out the provisions of the Treaty of Northampton, by which their lands were to be restored to the "Disinherited", _i.e._ to barons whose property in Scotland had been forfeited because they had adopted the English side in the war. A somewhat serious situation was thus created, and Edward, not unnaturally, took advantage of it to disown the Treaty of Northampton, which had been negotiated by the Mortimers during his minority, and which was extremely unpopular in England. He at once recognized Edward Balliol as King of Scotland. The only defence of Randolph's action is the probability that he suspected Edward to be in search of a pretext for refusing to be bound by a treaty made in such circumstances, and if a struggle were to ensue, it was certainly desirable not to increase the power of the English party. Edward proceeded to assist Balliol in an expedition to Scotland, which Mr. Lang describes as "practically an Anglo-Norman filibustering expedition, winked at by the home government, the filibusters being neither more nor less Scottish than most of our _noblesse_". But before Balliol reached Scotland, the last of the paladins whose names have been immortalized by the Bruce's wars, had disappeared from the scene. Randolph died at Musselburgh in July, 1332, and Scotland was left leaderless. The new regent, the Earl of Mar, was