The monks of Paisley during the times of Wallace and Bruce were on the patriotic side. After Bruce had murdered the Red Comyn before the altar of the Franciscan friars at Dumfries, the deed lay heavy on his conscience, and the Steward used his influence with the Pope to procure absolution. A commission was issued to the abbot of Paisley by Berengarius, the penitentiary of the Pope, to absolve the Bruce and appoint him proper penance for his crime. "How the duty committed to him was discharged by the Abbot or what penance he enjoined, we do not know. It may have been to fulfil the penance imposed at Paisley that Bruce desired so ardently to visit the Holy Sepulchre. He was excommunicated again soon afterwards, and years elapsed before he was finally restored to the favour of the Church; but his absolution at Paisley was a gleam of sunshine in the midst of his stormy life, and one of the most interesting pictures in the history of our abbey is that of the monarch kneeling before its altar and amidst its fire-stained walls."[372] James, the Steward, died on 16th July 1309, and, like the earlier Stewarts, was probably buried in the ruined abbey. He was succeeded by his son Walter, who married Marjory, the daughter of Robert the Bruce. Their married life was short, and the untimely death of Marjory took place within a year. Walter died at Bathgate in 1326, and, like his wife, was buried in the abbey. "When long time their dule had made The corps to Paslay have they had, And there with great solemnity And with great dule eirded was he." Robert, the son of Walter and Marjory, was but a boy of ten or eleven years of age at his father's death, but he was a boy with great expectations. Failing the death of the king's son without heirs, the Scottish Parliament had solemnly ratified his succession to the Scottish throne. King Robert the Bruce died in 1329, and his only son, David II., succeeded him. By neither of his marriages had he any issue, and he was succeeded by his sister's son, Robert II., who became the founder of the Stewart dynasty. "The abbey was now under royal patronage, and Walter, the son of Alan, its founder--the Shropshire colonist--the progenitor of a race of kings."[373] Under royal favour and patronage the abbey entered on a course of prosperity, unbroken till the time of the Reformation. Robert II. died in 1390, and was buried at Scone. "If this be true, he was the first of the Stewarts who were laid elsewhere than in the precincts of the abbey, and the circumstance is all the more strange because Elizabeth More, the much-loved wife of his youth, and Euphan Ross, his queen, are buried there."[374]