If Bruce was at this time on the side of the patriots, as his Lordship says, it is singular that he did not appear among them on this eventful day, in a manner becoming his birth, talents, and great territorial influence. When all the chiefs of the party had collected their followers for a grand national struggle, Bruce is represented as employed in guarding, what his Lordship, for the sake of _effect_, calls the “important castle of Ayr,” which, it seems in those days, “_kept the communication open with Galloway, Argyllshire, and the Isles_.”[26] Had the possession of this “important castle” been of any use to an army stationed between Linlithgow and Falkirk, it certainly could have been defended by a person of less consequence than Bruce, whose military talents and numerous vassals would have been of infinitely greater service in the field. When Wallace was straining every nerve to collect the strength of the country, to oppose the formidable invaders, and with his utmost efforts could not muster more than 30,000 soldiers, can it be supposed, that he would have failed to summon to the standard of liberty a baron of such influence as the Earl of Carrick, if he thought there were a chance of the summons being obeyed? Though his Lordship asserts that Bruce had deserted the cause of Edward, yet he does not attempt to show that any communication took place between him and the Scottish army; nor by what authority he assumed the defence of the castle of Ayr, which was a fortress at that time belonging to the Crown. If Hemingford, on whose authority his Lordship chiefly relies, could have gone so egregiously astray from every thing like probability in the account he gives of the casualties of the battle, we may, without injustice, receive his testimony on this, or on any other subject, with suspicion; particularly when it goes to contradict historians of acknowledged veracity, who had opportunities of being at least equally well informed on the subject as himself. It has been advanced by the learned annalist, in evidence of the truth of Hemingford’s statement, that lands and castles belonging to Bruce were plundered and taken by the English army. By a parity of reasoning, if these lands and castles had been exempt from the general outrage, it would have proved that Bruce was in the interest of England; and the Guardian and Barons of Scotland would thereby have stood convicted of the unparalleled folly of allowing lands to be occupied, and castles to be held, in the very centre of the country, by the open and declared partisan of their enemy. That the title of Bruce to his Scottish estates was in abeyance, and his castles garrisoned for the safety of the commonwealth of Scotland, is the most probable state of the affair. When the half-famished soldiers of Edward, therefore, pillaged the lands, and attacked the castles of Bruce, they did what their King, under such circumstances, neither could nor would restrain,