Page:Robert the Bruce and the struggle for Scottish independence - 1909.djvu/399

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Sir Hugh de Mortimer,
Earl of March.
John, Earl of Warenne
and Surry.


CHAPTER XVI.

DEATH OF ROBERT DE BRUS, REVIEW OF HIS WORK AND CHARACTER.

A.D. 1329.

ROBERT DE BRUS had now accomplished his great work, and there was nothing in his age of two score and fourteen years to forbid the expectation of his living to confirm it before the kingdom should pass to his son. But the fates decreed otherwise. He was a physical wreck, and in the spring of 1329 Douglas, who was constantly in attendance at Cardross, began to despair of his restoration to health.

Not that the King was wholly bedridden or confined to the house. He continued to move about his kingdom, as occasion required, till within a few weeks of his death. He paid one more visit to Galloway, the scene of so many of his early adventures, resting at Glenluce on March 29, 1329.[1] Thence Douglas travelled with him to Cardross, and both were aware that, to use Froissart's words,

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  1. The Douglas Book, i., 172.