Junior High School Literature, Book 1Elson, William H. (William Harris)
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Junior High School Literature, Book 1
Elson, William H. (William Harris)
American literature; English literature; Readers
After this a peace was concluded with Robert Bruce, on terms highly
honorable to Scotland; for the English King renounced all pretensions
to the sovereignty of the country, and, moreover, gave his sister, a
princess called Joanna, to be wife to Robert Bruce’s son, called David.
This treaty was very advantageous to the Scots. It was called the treaty
of Northampton, because it was concluded at that town, in the year 1328.
Good King Robert did not long survive this joyful event. He was not
aged more than four-and-fifty years, but, as I said before, his bad
health was caused by the hardships which he sustained during his youth,
and at length he became very ill. Finding that he could not recover,
he assembled around his bedside the nobles and counselors in whom he
most trusted. He told them that now, being on his death-bed, he sorely
repented all his misdeeds, and particularly, that he had, in his passion,
killed Comyn with his own hand, in the church and before the altar. He
said that if he had lived, he had intended to go to Jerusalem, to make
war upon the Saracens who held the Holy Land, as some expiation for the
evil deeds he had done. The King soon afterwards expired and his body was
laid in the sepulcher in the midst of the church of Dunfermline, under a
marble stone. But the church becoming afterwards ruinous, and the roof
falling down with age, the monument was broken to pieces, and nobody
could tell where it stood. But six or seven years ago, when they were
repairing the church at Dunfermline, and removing the rubbish, lo! they
found fragments of the marble tomb of Robert Bruce. Then they began to
dig farther, thinking to discover the body of this celebrated monarch;
and at length they came to the skeleton of a tall man, and they knew it
must be that of King Robert, as he was known to have been buried in a
winding sheet of cloth of gold, of which many fragments were found about
this skeleton. So orders were sent from the King’s Court of Exchequer
to guard the bones carefully, until a new tomb should be prepared, into
which they were laid with profound respect. A great many gentlemen and
ladies attended, and almost all the common people in the neighborhood;
and as the church could not hold half the numbers, the people were
allowed to pass through it, one after another, that each one, the
poorest as well as the richest, might see all that remained of the great
King, Robert Bruce, who restored the Scottish monarchy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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