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The mother of the Bruces thought it advisable to follow them, to see, perhaps, in person, that they conducted themselves towards their guest as a colonel's daughter should.
The central walk between Marlborough and Savernake is unsurpassed in England and probably in Europe. It leads to Tottenham House, situated at the eastern extremity and belonging to the Marquis of Ailesbury. By marriage the estates afterwards went to the Bruces, who still hold them. Herds of deer roam the open glades, and wild life is abundant and varied.
When John Balliol had decided to rebel, he had transferred the lands of Annandale from the Bruces to the Comyns, and they had been restored by Edward I after Balliol's submission. From 1299 to 1303, Bruce had been associated with Comyn in the guardianship of the kingdom, but, like Comyn, had submitted to Edward.
Each castle took a long time to subdue, and demanded engineering resources and a persistency of effort, which were difficult to obtain from a popular army. The garrisons co-operated with the Scottish nobles who still adhered to Edward through jealousy of the upstart Bruces and love of feudal independence, rather than by reason of any sympathy with the English cause.
Private war now broke out between the Bruces and Balliols; and the party of Balliol appealed to Edward, through Fraser, Bishop of St Andrews, asking the English king to prevent civil war, and recommending Balliol as a person to be carefully treated. Next the Seven Earls, alleging some dim elective right, recommended Bruce, and appealed to Edward as their legal superior.
"Maybe he's right, just the same," observed her chum, slowly. "Mr. Gordon isn't likely to tell you anything himself. If you ever find out about your folks it will be in some such way as Scorch says." Bye and bye it was time to go back to Pinewood Hall again. Nancy had remained the whole summer with the Bruces, and she had enjoyed every day of that time.
In Easter week, 1317, Roger Mortimer, afterwards Earl of March, nearly allied to the English King on the one hand, and maternally descended from the Marshals and McMurroghs on the other, arrived at Youghal, as Lord Justice, released the Earl of Ulster on reaching Dublin, and prepared to dispute the progress of the Bruces towards the South.
What this vague statement meant, it was reserved for the Bruce to determine, and the Bruces had, as yet, not one foot of Scottish soil. The agreement made in 1092 did not prevent Rufus from completing his father's work by the conquest of Cumberland, to which the Scots had claims.
Feeling that she had been working too hard, being in much distress about Harry West, and in some for herself, and learning that Wilmot Allen was to be of the party, Barbara told Blizzard, at the end of his sitting on Friday, that he need not come Saturday, as she was going to spend the week-end with the Bruces at Meadowbrook. "I'm dog-tired," she said, "and that's the same as being discouraged.
"But it's the only bit o' the Bruces that the lad's gotten in him, thank the Lord!" Though the earl did not say openly "thank the Lord," still he, too, recognized with a solemn joy that the qualities he and Helen dreaded had either not been inherited by Captain Bruce's son, or else timely care had rooted them out.
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