Chapter X: Wallace and Bruce, 1297-1329
How the duty committed to him was discharged by the Abbot or what penance he enjoined we do not know. It may have been to fulfil the penance imposed at Paisley that Bruce desired so ardently to visit the Holy Sepulchre. He was excommunicated again soon afterwards, and years elapsed before he was filially restored to the favour of the Church; but his absolution at Paisley was a gleam of sunshine in the midst of his stormy life, and one of the most interesting pictures in the history of our Abbey is that of the monarch kneeling before its altar and amidst its fire-stained walls.
James the Stewart died on 16th July, 1309, and is believed to have been buried in the ruined Abbey. [20] He was succeeded by his son Walter, who, like his ancestors, took a leading part in the transactions of the time, but, unlike them, his accession is not marked by any gift to the Convent for the soul of his father. It was not a time for giving and receiving gifts, and the monks must have found, it hard enough to keep together what, they had left them. Edward II., in 1310, penetrated with his army to Renfrew, burning and wasting the country. [21] This certainly would not improve their condition, and the only reference in the Chartulary to this period regards the settlement in 1313 of a dispute between them and a certain John Pride, a burgess of Renfrew, who had been giving them some trouble. [22] Hope came to them and the rest of Scotland with the decisive battle of Bannockburn, in 1314. Walter the Stewart, then only in his twenty-first year, was there with a large body of men, many of whom must have been from his lands of Strathgryfe. He commanded a division of the Scottish army, and Barbour, in his graphic way, makes mention of him :—
Walter Stewart of Scotland syne
That then was but a beardless hyne,
Came with a rout of noble men
That might by countenance be ken.
His bravery on this occasion obtained for him the close friendship of the King. In the end of that year he was appointed to receive Elizabeth, the wife of King Robert, and Mallory, his daughter, at their entrance into Scotland on their return from captivity in England, and the year after he married the latter, whose acquaintance he had thus made, and who may have been captivated by the gallant bearing of her escort. She did not come to him empty-handed, for he received from the King as her dowry the Barony of Bathgate and other valuable possessions. Their wedded life was short; it lasted only a year, and sometime in 1316 [23] Abbot Roger had a grave to dig in the Abbey for Marjory.
The circumstances attending her death have been often told, and, though there may be in the story as it has come down to us little more than tradition, it is impossible not to believe that there is in it a considerable substratum of truth. [24] Midway between the Abbey and the Castle of the Stewarts at Renfrew there is an eminence called “the Knock,” a name which it has borne from earliest times. [25] This little elevation then rose in the midst of the wood which stretched between Paisley and the Clyde, and was probably a frequent hunting-ground of the Stewarts. Here, it is said, Marjory, while following the chase, to which the family of her husband were devoted, was thrown from her horse in its struggles through a marshy piece of ground long after shown as the scene of the accident. [26] The pangs of labour seized her, and she died on the field ; but the Caesarean operation was performed, and the life of the child was saved, though it was hurt in the eye by the operator. This child afterwards bore the name of “Blear-Eye,” and his mother by tradition was called “Queen Blear-Eye,” though she never was Queen. This is the story that has come down to us. [27]
[20] History of the Stewarts, by Andrew Stewart, M.P., p. 16.
[21] Tytler, p. 108. Rotuli Scotiae, vol. I., p. 103.
[22] Reg. de Pas., p. 376.
[23] Stewart's History of the Stewarts :—“I have chosen this date as the most probable.” Crawford says October, 1317, as also Balfour (Annals, Vol. I. p. 96). Chalmers (Caledonia, Vol. III., p. 824) gives the date 1315-16.
[24] The reader who wishes to see what may be said on the other side, may read Lord Hailes' Essay. I give the story as tradition has handed it down.
[25] See Reg. de Pas.
[26] See M'Farlane's description of the locality in 1842.—Stat. Acct. of Renfrew.
[27] See appendix to Hamilton's Renfrewshire, where Lord Hailes' criticism on this story is, I think, successfully controverted ; also p. 146, where the story as told by Dunlop is given