oyed up by his natural courage, saw the glory
alone of the enterprise, or regarded the prodigious difficulties which
attended it as the source only of further glory. The miseries and
oppressions which he had beheld his countrymen suffer in their unequal
contest, the repeated defeats and misfortunes which they had undergone,
proved to him so many incentives to bring them relief, and conduct
them to vengeance against the haughty victor. The circumstances which
attended Bruce's first declaration are variously related; but we shall
rather follow the account given by the Scottish historians; not that
their authority is in general anywise comparable to that of the English,
but because they may be supposed sometimes better informed concerning
facts which so nearly interested their own nation.

Bruce, who had long harbored in his breast the design of freeing his
enslaved country, ventured at last to open his mind to John Cummin, a
powerful nobleman, with whom he lived in strict intimacy. He found his
friend, as he imagined, fully possessed with the same sentiments; and
he needed to employ no arts of persuasion to make him embrace the
resolution of throwing off, on the first favorable opportunity, the
usurped dominion of the English. But on the departure of Bruce, who
attended Edward to London, Cummin, who either had all along dissembled
with him, or began to reflect more coolly in his absence on the
desperate nature of the undertaking, resolved to atone for his crime in
assenting to this rebellion, by the merit of revealing the secret to
the king of England. Edward did not immediately commit Bruce to custody;
because he intended at the same time to seize his three brothers, who
resided in Scotland; and he contented himself with secretly setting
spies upon him, and ordering all his motions to be strictly watched. A
nobleman of Edward's court, Bruce's intimate friend, was apprised of
his danger; but not daring, amidst so many jealous eyes, to hold any
conversation with him, he fell on an expedient to give him warning, that
it was full time he should make his escape. He sent him by his servant
a pair of gilt spurs and a purse of gold, which he pretended to have
borrowed from him; and left it to the sagacity of his friend to discover
the meaning of the present. Bruce immediately contrived the means of his
escape; and as the ground was at that time covered with snow, he had the
precaution, it is said, to order his horses to be shod w