108 WORKMEN AND HEROES To this request the men of Annandale deferred giving any answer till the morning, and took advantage of the night to retire, so that Bruce could only join the insurgents with his own vassals of Carrick. The first disappointment might have taught Bruce to desist from his design, for which the time was not yet ripe ; but blinded by ambition, he entered into a strict alliance with Wishart, the Bishop of Glasgow, and the Steward of Scot- land, the principal leaders of the insurrection. Upon joining his new associates, he found their purposes utterly incompatible with his views upon the crown. Wallace, the soul of the party, had ever supported the claims of Baliol, and his great supporter, Sir Andrew Moray, a near connection of the Comyns, had the same object. During the campaign, therefore, of 1298, which concluded with the battle of Falkirk, Bruce shut himself up in his castle of Ayr, maintaining a cautious neutrality, while his father continued to reside in England and to serve Edward in his wars. The king, however, did not admire this cold system of neu- trality. He in consequence determined to attack the castle of Ayr, and Bruce, dreading the consequences, razed it to the ground, and sought an asylum in the mountain fastnesses of Carrick. In the following year, when Wallace had resigned the regency, John Comyn, of Badenoch, and Sir John de Soulis, were chosen governors of the kingdom, and the party of Bruce availed themselves of the opportunity to advance his in- fluence by opposition to those in power, and by defeating every measure taken for the public benefit. An attempt was made by those who really wished well to the national cause, or who dreaded that their disunion might be fatal to all alike, to reconcile the contending factions ; with this view they elected Bruce, and Lamberton, Bishop of Glasgow, joint regents in the name of Baliol ; but this ill- assorted coalition soon fell to pieces, as might have been expected, where the views which one party entertained in secret were so utterly opposed to the avowed purposes of all. The policy which actuated Bruce on this occasion may be easily explained. It was clear that Edward would never consent to the restoration of Baliol, then in exile, and the Comyns had taken so decided a part against him, that it seemed most improbable he would ever consent to raise one of that family to the throne. Continuing, therefore, the same line of duplicity with which he had commenced, and which he had only abandoned for a single instant in the vain hope of per- suading the party of Wallace to openly adopt his claims, he now endeavored by submission and affected attachment to win the favor of the English monarch. Ed- ward, he well knew, had the power, could he be brought to entertain the inclina- tion, to place him on the Scottish throne, and if this point were once attained, Bruce trusted that means would afterward occur of shaking off all dependence upon his benefactor. In these designs he to a certain extent succeeded, but not in his main object. If he was crafty, Edward was yet craftier. He had fallen into the same error that his father had, in 1 296, and was outwitted by the supe- rior political ability of him whom he had intended to deceive, and who, it must be confessed, was equally insincere. Edward cheated both father and son, by
