The Scottish Chiefs
by Miss Jane Porter



Chapter I.

Scotland.



Bright was the summer of 1296. The war which had desolated Scotland
was then at an end. Ambition seemed satiated; and the vanquished,
after having passed under the yoke of their enemy, concluded they might
wear their chains in peace. Such were the hopes of those Scottish
noblemen who, early in the preceding spring, had signed the bond of
submission to a ruthless conqueror, purchasing life at the price of all
that makes life estimable-liberty and honor.

Prior to this act of vassalage, Edward I., King of England, had entered
Scotland at the head of an immense army. He seized Berwick by
stratagem; laid the country in ashes; and, on the field of Dunbar,
forced the Scottish king and his nobles to acknowledge him their liege
lord.

But while the courts of Edward, or of his representatives, were crowded
by the humbled Scots, the spirit of one brave man remained unsubdued.
Disgusted alike at the facility with which the sovereign of a warlike
nation could resign his people and his crown into the hands of a
treacherous invader, and at the pusillanimity of the nobles who had