March 1324 a son was born to Bruce named David; on May 4, 1328, by the
Treaty of Northampton, the independence of Scotland was recognised. In
July the infant David married Joanna, daughter of Edward II.

On June 7, 1329, Bruce died and was buried at Dunfermline; his heart, by
his order, was carried by Douglas towards the Holy Land, and when Douglas
fell in a battle with the Moors in Spain, the heart was brought back by
Sir Simon Lockhart of the Lee. The later career of Bruce, after he had
been excommunicated, is that of the foremost knight and most sagacious
man of action who ever wore the crown of Scotland. The staunchness with
which the clergy and estates disregarded papal fulminations (indeed under
William the Lion they had treated an interdict as waste-paper) indicated
a kind of protestant tendency to independence of the Holy See.

Bruce's inclusion of representatives of the Burghs in the first regular
Scottish Parliament (at Cambuskenneth in 1326) was a great step forward
in the constitutional existence of the country. The king, in Scotland,
was expected to "live of his own," but in 1326 the expenses of the war
with England compelled Bruce to seek permission for taxation.




CHAPTER IX. DECADENCE AND DISASTERS--REIGN OF DAVID II.


The heroic generation of Scotland was passing off the stage. The King
was a child. The forfeiture by Bruce of the lands of hostile or
treacherous lords, and his bestowal of the estates on his partisans, had
made the disinherited nobles the enemies of Scotland, and had fed too