Page:Robert the Bruce and the struggle for Scottish independence - 1909.djvu/180

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140
Robert the Bruce.
[1306 A.D.-

wick and the Tower of London, were to be made of wooden lattice strengthened with iron, and furnished like a comfortable chamber (et q la kage soit ensi fait q la Contesse y eit essement de chambre cortoise).[1] The Queen was to be imprisoned at Brustewick. Two waiting-women "advanced in years and not gay," two valets, and a foot page were appointed by King Edward's command, "sober and not riotous, to make her bed, and for other things necessary for the comfort of her chamber."

Sir Simon Fraser was executed in London on September 6th, according to the ferocious manner prescribed by the Norman law against high treason. First he was hung, then taken down alive from the gallows and his entrails torn out and burned before his eyes. Next he was beheaded, the body was hung up again, and the head was taken, with trumpets sounding, to London Bridge and there fixed up. On the 27th, the body and the gallows were taken down and burnt together by special orders of the King.[2] The Earl of Athol, who had been taken in attempting to escape by sea, suffered in the same way on October 29th, but inasmuch as he was cousin of the King of England, his gibbet was made thirty feet higher than Fraser's. The chronicler of the Flores complacently dwells on the details of his death, which, he says, were arranged ut majores cruciatus sentiret—that he might endure the greater torment.

Sir Christopher de Seton was hanged at Dumfries, his brother Sir Alexander at Newcastle. It was in-

  1. Palgrave, 358.
  2. Annales Londinenses, i., 149.