The poem must have stood in more awkward antagonism with "De Strivilniensi Obsidione," which is extant in Fordun, than Waller's panegyric on Cromwell does face to face with his eulogium on Charles II. We doubt whether the monk had so witty an apology for his double tongue as the courtier; but he had a better excuse, for he said, "_Actus me invito, factus, non est meus actus_." There is both rhyme and reason in that. The stubbornness of the Scots, which was at last a choke-pear to Edward, seems to have stimulated the poet almost as much as it exasperated the king. For, besides the siege of Stirling, we find on the list of Baston's productions one entitled "De Altero Scotorum Bello," and another "De Scotiæ guerris Variis." Baston survived his master, the broken _Malleus Scotorum_, only three years. It is uncertain whether he retained his office after the accession of Edward the Second; but, if so, death had released him from duty before that prince's invasion of this country in 1314. Otherwise he would probably have had to pay another visit to the ominous neighbourhood of Stirling Castle, at a risk, if he escaped a deadlier chance, of being captured by the Bruce himself, and of having a caged poet's leisure to meditate a threnodia for Bannockburn. Boece, in Bellenden's version, asserts that this was actually the case,--that it was "Edward the Second, who, by vain arrogance, as if the Scotch had been sicker in his hands, brought with him ane Carmelite monk to put his victory in versis; that the poet was taken in this field of Bannockburn, and commandit by King Robert the Bruce to write as he saw, in sithement of his ransom." There is also among the political songs published by the Camden Society, a wretched transcript (from the Cotton. MSS.) of a wretched piece of raving on this very battle, also attributed to Baston,--(and announced, we suppose by an error of the press, as written in the reign of Edward the Third.) But we are inclined to believe that Baston died about four years before that great day for Scotland. We do not, however, undertake to settle the point. We have no certain accounts of Baston's successor.