The coronation might have been expected to strike the imagination of the Scots, and to rally the spirit that cherished the memory of Wallace. Fordun asserts that Bruce's friends in Scotland, as compared with his collective foes, were but 'as a single drop compared with the waves of the sea, or as a single grain of seed compared with the multitudinous sand.' The hyperbole has a considerable basis of fact. Bruce, indeed, was supported at his coronation by the two chief prelates of Scotland, the Bishops of St Andrews and Glasgow, and by the Abbot of Scone; by strong-handed relatives--his four brothers, Edward, Thomas, Alexander, and Nigel; his nephew, Thomas Randolph of Strathdon (better known afterwards as Randolph, Earl of Moray), and his brother-in-law, Sir Christopher de Seton (husband of his sister Christian); by the Earls of Lennox, Athol, and Errol; and by such valorous men as James de Douglas, Hugh de la Haye (brother of Errol), David Barclay of Cairns, Alexander, brother of Sir Simon Fraser, Walter de Somerville of Carnwath, David de Inchmartin, Robert Boyd, and Robert Fleming. Apart from the episcopal influence, however, the array is not very imposing. Yet how vastly superior to the meagre beginnings of Wallace! Bruce, indeed, lacked one vital source of strength that his great predecessor had--intimate association and sympathy with the common folk; but, on the other hand, he was admitted, except by the Comyn interest, to be the legitimate sovereign, and 'is not the King's name twenty thousand names?' And so it would have been but for his inglorious record. It is only the servile adulation of later writers that has pictured Bruce as animated by patriotism. He was simply a great Anglo-Norman baron in quest of aggrandizement; and it took many years to satisfy the people generally that their interests were safe in his keeping. But he was a man with deep reserves of strength, freed at last from the paralysis of worldly prudence by a sudden shock, and compelled to defend his crown and his life with his back to the wall. Happily, if only incidentally, such self-defence involved the championship of the independence of Scotland. CHAPTER IV DEFEAT AND DISASTER: METHVEN AND KILDRUMMY