Page:Robert the Bruce and the struggle for Scottish independence - 1909.djvu/301

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Thomas, Earl of Lancaster. Sir Richard Fitz Alan,
Earl of Arundel.


CHAPTER XI.

CONTINUED SUCCESS OF THE SCOTTISH ARMS.

A.D. 1316-1319.

IT is a relief to turn from the dismal record of the Irish campaign and resume the course of events in Scotland. There, too, there had been suffering and anxiety, and the pages are plentifully sprinkled with blood; but it is at least a more inspiriting story than the ignoble slaughter of starving and half-naked kernes in a quarrel between English and Scots, for a dominion which both were striving to usurp.

There had been stirring times in King Robert's absence, and his taste for knight-errantry must have caused him some twinges of envy as he listened to the report which Douglas had to lay before him.

Not a solitary gleam of good fortune had shone on the English arms since, in the spring of 1315, John of Lorn had recaptured the Isle of Man,[1] which Bruce had conquered in June, 1313.[2] Aymer

  1. Bain, iii., 80.
  2. Barbour is wholly at fault in his account of the capture of this chieftain during King Robert's expedition to the Western Isles.

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