Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II

 
  “On foot should be all Scottish war,
  By hill and moss themselves to ware;
  Let woods for walls be; bow and spear
  And battle-axe their fighting gear:
  That enemies do them na dreir,
  In strait places gar keep all store,
  And burn the plain land them before:
  Then shall they pass away in haste,
  When that they find nothing but waste;
  With wiles and wakening of the night.
  And mickle noise made on height;
  Then shall they turn with great affray,
  As they were chased with sword away.
  This is the counsel and intent
  Of Good King Robert’s Testament.”
 

With these fierce, though sagacious counsels, the hero of Scotland died on the 7th of June, 1329. He was buried in Dunfermline Abbey, after his heart had been extracted and embalmed according to his command; but the dissolution of the convents made sad havoc among the royal tombs of Scotland, and two churches had risen and fallen above his marble tomb before it was discovered among the ruins in 1819, and his remains were found in a winding-sheet of cloth of gold, and the breastbone sawn through. Multitudes were admitted to gaze on them, and there were many tears shed, for, in the simple and beautiful words of Scott, “There was the wasted skull which once was the head that thought so wisely and boldly for his country’s deliverance; and there was the dry bone which had once been the sturdy arm that killed Sir Henry de Bohun between the two armies at a single blow, the evening before the battle of Bannockburn.”

The Bruce’s heart was enclosed in a silver case, and hung round the neck of Douglas, who sailed at once on his pilgrimage, taking with him a retinue befitting the royal treasure that he bore. But on his way he landed in Spain, and esteeming that any war with any Saracen was agreeable to his vow, he offered his aid to King Alfonso, of Castile. But he was ignorant of the Moorish mode of fighting, and, riding too far in advance with his little band, was inclosed and cut off by the wheeling horsemen of the Moors. Still he might have escaped, had he not turned to rescue Sir William St. Clair, of Roslyn; but in doing this he was so entangled, that he saw no escape, and taking from his neck his precious charge, he threw it before him, shouting aloud, “Pass onward as thou wert wont! I follow, or die!” He followed, and died. His corpse was found on the battle-field lying over the heart of Bruce, and his friends, lifting up the body, bore it back again to his own little church of St. Bride of Douglas, where it lies interred; while the crowned and bleeding heart shines emblazoned on the shield of the great Douglas line, a memorial of the time and hearty love that knit together, through adversity and prosperity, the good King Robert and the good Lord James. The heart itself was given into the charge of Sir Simon Locard, of Lee, already the keeper of the curious talisman called the Lee Penny, brought by Earl David of Huntingdon from the East; but he did not deem it needful to carry his burthen to Jerusalem, and it was buried beneath the altar at Melrose Abbey, Sir Simon changed his name to Lockhart, and bore on his shield a heart with a fetterlock, on his crest a hand with a key, and for his motto, “Corda serrata pando.”

Here, then, we close the first series of Cameos, during which we have seen the Norman conquerors gradually become English, and the kingdom take somewhat of its present form. In another volume we hope to show the long wars of the Middle Ages.