against
overwhelming power and a king who had shown them more tenderness than
their leader for the time. David's one castle of Bere was starved into
surrender by the Earl of Pembroke, and David himself taken in a bog by
some Welsh in the English interest. His last remaining adherent, Rees
ap Walwayn, surrendered, on hearing of his lord's captivity, and was
sent prisoner to the Tower. For David himself a sadder fate was
reserved. His request for a personal interview with his injured
sovereign was refused. Edward did not care to speak with a man whom he
had no thought of pardoning. He at once summoned a parliament of
barons, judges, and burgesses to meet at Shrewsbury, September 29th,
and decide on the prisoner's fate. It is evident that Edward was
incensed in no common measure against the traitor whom, as he
expressed it, he had "taken up as an exile, nourished as an orphan,
endowed from his own lands, and placed among the lords of our palace,"
and who had repaid these benefits by a sudden and savage war.

Nevertheless, the King, from policy or from temperament, resolved to
associate the whole nation in a great act of justice on a man of
princely lineage. The sentence, which excited no horror at the time,
was probably passed without a dissentient voice. David was sentenced,
as a traitor, to be drawn slowly to the gallows; as a murderer, to be
hanged; as one who had shed blood during Passion-tide, to be
disembowelled after death; and for plotting the King's death, his
dismembered limbs were to be sent to Winchester, York, Northampton,
and Bristol. Seldom has a shameful and violent death been better
merited than by a double-dyed traitor like David, false by turns to
his country and his king; nor could justice be better honored than by
making the last penalty of rebellion fall upon the guilty Prince,
rather than on his followers.

The form of punishment in itself was mitigated from the extreme
penalty of the law, which prescribed burning for traitors. Compared
with the execution under the Tudors and Stuarts, or with the reprisal
taken after Culloden, the single sentence of death carried out on
David seems scarcely to challenge criticism. Yet it marks a decline
from the almost bloodless policy of former kings. Since the times of
William Rufus no English noble, except under John, had paid the
penalty of rebellion with life. In particular, during the late reign,
Fawkes de Breaute and the adherents of Simon de Montfort had b