also the cause of
the independence of Scotland, they maintained. Walter, who then held the
office of Steward, was knighted on the field of Bannockburn. He was
afterwards, as the story goes, sent to receive on the Border, after
peace had been made, various prisoners who had been detained in England
during the war, and among them Marjory Bruce, the daughter of the
patriot-king. It would be easy to imagine the romance that followed: the
young knight reverently escorting the young princess across the
devastated country, which had not yet had time to recover its cruel
wounds, but yet was all astir with satisfaction and hope: and how his
account of what had happened in Scotland, and, above all, of that
memorable field where he had won from the Bruce's own famous sword the
touch of knighthood, would stir the maiden's heart. A brave young
soldier with great hereditary possessions, and holding so illustrious an
office, there was no reason why he should despair, however high-placed
his affections might be. It takes a little from the romance to be
obliged to acknowledge that he was already a widower; but marriages were
early and oft-repeated in those days, and when Marjory Bruce died her
husband was still only about twenty-three. It was thus that the crown
came to the family of the Stewards of Scotland, the Stewarts of modern
times: coming with a "lass" as her descendant said long afterwards, and
likely to "go with a lass" when it was left to the infant Mary: though
this last, with all her misfortunes, was the instrument not of
destruction but transformation, and transferred that crown to a more
splendid and enlarged dominion.

It was in the reign of Marjory's son, the grandson and namesake of the
Bruce, and of his successors, that Edinburgh began to be of importance
in the country, slowly becoming visible by means of charters and
privileges, and soon by records of Parliaments, laws made, and public
acts proceeding from the growing city. Robert Bruce, though he had
destroyed the castle, granted certain liberties and aids to the
burghers, both in repression and in favour pursuing the same idea, with
an evident desire to substitute the peaceful progress of the town for
the dangerous domination of the fortress. Between that period and the
reign of the second Stewart, King Robert III, the castle had already
been re-erected and re-destroyed more than once. Its occupation by the
English seemed the chief thing dreaded by the Scots, and