Page:Robert the Bruce and the struggle for Scottish independence - 1909.djvu/332

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
276
Robert the Bruce.
[1319 A.D.-

which seems to show that she was not the person who revealed the plot. Sir Gilbert de Malesherbe, Sir John de Logie, and Richard Brown, suffered death as traitors. Roger de Moubray died during the trial, but he was found guilty, and his body was condemned to be drawn, hanged, and beheaded. The King, however, remitted this sentence and allowed his remains to receive honourable burial—a favour better understood and appreciated in the days of chivalry than it might be in modern times. Sir Eustace de Maxwell of Caerlaverock, Sir Walter de Barclay, sheriff of Aberdeen, Sir Patrick Graham, Hamelin de Troupe, and Eustace de Rattray, all of whom were arraigned on the charge of high treason, were acquitted. But the fate which, of all others, most deeply moved the popular compassion was that of Sir David de Brechin, the King's brother-in-law.[1] It seems that the conspirators, after exacting an oath of secrecy from him, had imparted to him their project; he disapproved of the plot, and would not join in it, but neither would he sully his knightly honour by betraying it. Such, at least, is Barbour's explanation of a perplexing case; which, if it be the true one, leaves one to wonder why the brave Sir David, with a long record of valuable service at his credit, should have been drawn and hanged, while the chief conspirator, de Soulis, escaped the gallows.

Barbour, however, is not an infallible authority on this affair. He tries to make out that Sir Ingelram de Umfraville, who was taken prisoner at Bannock-

  1. Lord Hailes calls him the King's nephew, but there does not seem to have been more than one Sir David de Brechin.