Douglasdale, Ettrick Forest, and Jeddart, were thus made too terrible to be held by the English; but Bruce himself was for a long time disabled by a severe illness which gave slight hope of recovery. At Inverary, the Earl of Buchan made an attack on him when he was still so weak as to be obliged to be supported on horseback by a man on either side of him; but he gained a complete victory, and followed it up by such a dreadful devastation, that "the harrying of Buchan" was a proverb for half a century. The oaks sunk deep in the mosses bear marks of fire on their trunks, as if in memory of this destruction.
Another victory, a "right fair point of chivalry," was gained in Galloway by Edward Bruce, who in one year, 1308, took thirteen fortresses in that district. Robert might well say that "he was more afraid of the bones of Edward I. than of the living Edward of Caernarvon, and that it was easier to win a kingdom from the son than half a foot of land from the father." Edward II. was always intending to come to Scotland in person, and wasting time in preparations, spending subsidies as fast as he collected them, and changing his governors. In less than a year six different rulers were appointed, and, of course no consistent course could be pursued by nobles following each other in such quick succession.
At a lonely house near Lyme Water, Sir James Douglas captured the King's sister's son, Thomas Randolph, and led him to Bruce.
"Nephew" said Bruce, "you have forgotten your allegiance."
"Have Done nothing of which I have been ashamed," returned Randolph. "You blame me, but you deserve blame. If you choose to defy the King of England, why not debate the matter like a true knight in a pitched field?"
"That may be hereafter," replied Bruce, calmly; "but since thou art so rude of speech, it is fitting thy proud words should be punished, till thou learn my right and thy duty."
Whatever was, strictly speaking, Bruce's _right_, his nephew learnt in captivity to respect it, gave in his adhesion to King Robert, was created Earl of Moray, and became one of the firmest friends of his throne. The world was beginning to afford the successful man countenance, and the cunning Philippe le Bel wrote letters which were to pass through England under the address of the Earl of Carrick, but, within, bore the direction to King Robert of Scotland.
A vain march of Edward II into Scotland was revenged by a horrible inroad of the Scots into Northumberland, up to the very gates of Durham. On his return, Robert tried to surprise Berwick, but was prevented by the barking of a dog, which awakened the garrison. He next besieged Perth. After having discovered the shallowest part of the moat, he made a feint of raising the siege, and, after an absence of eight days, made a sudden night-attack, wading through the moat with the water up to his neck, and a scaling-ladder in one hand, while with the other he felt his way with his spear.
"What," cried a French knight, "shall we say of our lords, who live at home in ease and jollity, when so brave a knight is here risking his life to win a miserable hamlet?"
So saying, the Frenchman rushed after the King and his men, and the town was taken before the garrison were well awake.
About the same time Douglas came upon Roxburgh, when the garrison were enjoying the careless mirth of Shrovetide. Hiding their armor with dark cloaks, Sir James and his men crept on all-fours through the brushwood till they came to the very foot of the battlements, and could hear a woman singing to her child that the Black Douglas should not touch it, and the sentries saying to each other that yonder oxen were out late. Planting their ladders, the Scots gained the summit of the tower, killed the sentinels, and burst upon the revelry with shouts of "Douglas! Douglas!" The governor, a gallant Burgundian knight, named Fiennes, retreated into the keep, and held out till he was badly wounded, and forced to surrender, when he was spared, and retreated to die in England, while the castle was levelled to the ground by Edward Bruce.
The destruction of these strongholds was matter of great joy to the surrounding peasantry, who had been cruelly despoiled by the English soldiers there stationed; and a farmer, named Binning, actually made an attempt upon the great fortress of Linlithgow, which was well garrisoned by the English. He had been required to furnish the troops with hay, and this gave him the opportunity of placing eight strong peasants well armed, lying hidden, in the wagon, by which he walked himself, while it was driven by a stout countryman with an axe at his belt, and another party were concealed close without the walls.
The drawbridge was lowered, and the portcullis raised to admit the forage, when, at the moment that the wagon stood midway beneath the arch, at a signal from the farmer, the driver with his axe cut asunder the yoke, the horses started forward, and Binning, with a loud cry, "Call all! call all!" drew the sword hidden under his carter's frock, and killed the porter. The eight men leaped out from among the hay, and were joined by their friends from the ambush without; the cart under the doorway prevented the gates from being closed, and the pile of hay caught the portcullis as it fell. The Englishmen, surprised and discomfited, had no time to make head against the rustics, and were slaughtered or made prisoners; the castle was given up to the King, and Binning received the grant of an estate, and became a gentleman of coat-armor, with a wagon argent on his shield, and the harnessed head of a horse for a crest.
Jedburgh, Stirling, and Edinburgh, were the last castles still in the hands of the invaders. The Castle of Edinburgh, aloft on the rock frowning above the town, had been held by the English full twenty years, and, when Randolph was sent to besiege it, was governed by a Gascon knight named Piers Luband, a kinsman of Gaveston. In hatred and suspicion of all connected with the minion, the English soldiers rose against the foreigner, threw him into a dungeon, and, electing a fresh captain, made oath to hold out to the last. The rock was believed to be inaccessible, and a blockade appeared to be the only means of reducing the garrison. This had already lasted six weeks, when a man named Frank, coming secretly to Randolph, told him that his father had formerly been governor, and that he, when a youth, had been in the habit of scrambling down the south face of the rock, at night, to visit a young damsel who lived in the Grass-market, and returning in the same manner; and he undertook to guide a party by this perilous ascent into the very heart of the castle.
Randolph caught at the proposal, desperate as it was, and, selecting thirty men, chose an excessively dark night for the adventure. Frank went the first, climbing up the face of the precipice with hands and feet; then followed Sir Andrew Grey; thirdly, Randolph himself; and then the rest of the party. The ascent was exceedingly difficult and dangerous, especially in utter darkness and to men in full armor, fearing to make the slightest noise. Coming to a projecting crag, close under the wall, they rested to collect their breath, and listen. It was the moment when the guards were going their rounds, and, to their horror, they heard a soldier exclaim, as he threw a pebble down on them, "Away! I see you well!" A few more stones, and every man of them might have been hurled from the cliff by the soldiers merely rolling down stones on them. They dared not more, and a few moments' silence proved that the alarm had been merely a trick to startle the garrison-a jest soon to turn to earnest.