"When long time their dule had made
The corps to Paslay have they had,
And there with great solemnity
And with great dule eirded was he."

Robert, the son of Walter and Marjory, was but a boy of ten or eleven
years of age at his father's death, but he was a boy with great
expectations. Failing the death of the king's son without heirs, the
Scottish Parliament had solemnly ratified his succession to the Scottish
throne. King Robert the Bruce died in 1329, and his only son, David II.,
succeeded him. By neither of his marriages had he any issue, and he was
succeeded by his sister's son, Robert II., who became the founder of the
Stewart dynasty.

"The abbey was now under royal patronage, and Walter, the son of
Alan, its founder--the Shropshire colonist--the progenitor of a race
of kings."[373]

Under royal favour and patronage the abbey entered on a course of
prosperity, unbroken till the time of the Reformation. Robert II. died
in 1390, and was buried at Scone.

"If this be true, he was the first of the Stewarts who were laid
elsewhere than in the precincts of the abbey, and the circumstance
is all the more strange because Elizabeth More, the much-loved wife
of his youth, and Euphan Ross, his queen, are buried there."[374]

Robert III. had two sons, the elder of whom was David, Duke of Rothesay
(1378-1402). He was under the guardianship of Albany, who after a short
time starved him to death at Falkland. Robert, anxious for the safety of
his younger son, James, resolved to send him to France, but on his way
thither he was captured by an English vessel, and thereafter imprisoned
in the Tower of London. There is good reason for believing that Albany
and the Douglases had to do with the imprisonment of the Prince, and
they did everything to prevent his release. When the news was brought to
the king in the castle of Rothesay, he succumbed to paroxysms of grief,
and died 4th April 1406.

"Touched by grief," says Fordun, "his bodily strength vanished, his
countenance paled, and, borne down by sorrow, he refused all food,
until at last he breathed forth his spirit to his Creator."

He was buried in the abbey of Paisley before the high altar, and was the
last of the Stewarts who was laid there.[375]

After the destruction of the abbey, caused by the wars with England, the
edifice seems to have remained for long in a dismantled condition, but
gifts having been receive