Of the legitimate claimants, John Comyn the Black, Lord of Badenoch had a claim of descent from Duncan I, the king murdered by Macbeth in the Shakespearean play of the same name. Two men, the Count of Holland and a Robert Pinkey had claims based on descent from the two younger sisters of Malcolm IV, William the Lion and David, Earl of Huntingdon. The Count of Holland, at one point claimed that David, Earl of Huntingdon had given up his rights to the throne in favour of his sister Ada, the Count's mother. Had this been true, the Count's claim would have been the strongest, but it was never proved and presently the Count gave up his claim to the throne. That left three further claimants, all descended from the daughters of David, Earl of Huntingdon. The two strongest were John Balliol, whose grandmother was Margaret, David's eldest daughter and Robert Bruce Lord of Annandale, the son of David's second daughter Isabella. That the rules of primogeniture cleary showed Balliol's claim to be the stronger mattered little to the Bruce family and the stage seemed set for a destructive civil war. 

It was then that Bishop Fraser, intent on avoiding such a calamity, wrote to Edward I asking him to come north and choose between the candidates. Edward came in the summer of 1291 and at Norham on Tweed his arrogant assertions that he was the Paramount Lord of Scotland angered the Scots who had come to hear his judgement. All but nine of the claimants that is. Balliol and Annandale among them, these men accepted Edward as their superior lord. Edward's final decision came months later and he chose Balliol. By the laws of the time it was the correct decision and though it brought Edward nearer his goal of dominating Scotland there can be no denying the justice of his choice. After Balliol was crowned at Scone as King John I, he rode south to Newcastle and there knelt in submission to Edward. Balliol was a weak man, alternatively timid or haughty and often sick. He was the last kind of king Scotland needed and Edward treated him with great contempt. He was ordered to Edward's court for the settlement of petty disputes affecting not England but Scotland, treaties were torn up and even the unpaid wine bills of Alexander III presented to him for settlement. Finally when ordered to take part in Edward's war against France, he decided enough was enough, ignored Edward's command and signed a treaty (the Auld Alliance) with France instead. 

Edward came north in a fury. Though the old Earl of Annandale was dead, his claim had passed to his shrewd son and vigorous grandson, both named like him, Robert the Bruce. The Bruces promised their swords in the service of Edward and held Carlisle for him against a besieging army led by John Comyn the Red, a supporter of Balliol and married to his sister. Edward raised the siege and then marched on to Berwick, held against him by William Douglas. The town fell, the inhabitants were massacred and soon after the Earl of Surrey, sent in pursuit of John Comyn, met his quarry by Dunbar castle and slaughtered his army. All the major castles and keeps in Scotland either surrendered to Edward or were taken by siege and soon English chains bound the country. In July of 1296 Balliol wrote a craven letter to Edward begging forgiveness and when he submitted to the Bishop of Durham at Brechin castle, the heraldic arms of Scotland were humiliatingly torn from his tunic leaving him only with the contempuous nickname of 'Toom Tabard', the empty coat. He was sent to prison in England. Scotland suffered under an English yoke and the cruelties practised by Edward's men were many and atrocious. They led to the revolt of Wallace, his great victory at Stirling Bridge, defeat at Falkirk and final barbarous execution in London. 

In those days Bruce found his family sometimes in Edward's favour, sometimes out and his own actions mirrored this fact. Sometimes the Bruce's sword was raised on behalf of Edward and sometimes against him. Bruce was appointed one of the Guardians of Scotland, along with Bishop Lamberton of St.Andrews and John Comyn the Red, son of the lord whose army had been destroyed by Surrey at Dunbar. They operated a shadowy government parallel to Edward's, but the rivalry between Bruce and the Comyn was bitter and sometimes violent and Bruce resigned his Guardianship in 1300. The Comyns, still Balliol supporters continued resistance and in 1300 and again in 1303, Edward rode north to punish their impudence. The latter occasion was prompted by the defeat of an English force by Comyn at Roslin. Edward wasted the countryside and the Comyn came before him in submission, his life being spared in return for an oath of allegiance to the English king. Bruce himself had submitted to Edward, once again, in 1302 and after Comyn's surrender was appointed, by Edward, joint Guardian of Scotland with Bishop Wishart of Glasgow and the English earl John de Mowbray. There was only one centre of resistance to Edward now and that was Stirling castle where a gallant William Oliphant and about two score men continued to keep the torch of Scottish liberty burning. Robert the Bruce commanded the English siege-engines that finally took the castle for Edward.

He moved with great despatch. His brothers took Dumfries Castle as Bruce rode north to Glasgow and on his knees begged absolution from Bishop Wishart. It was given but had no force of authority and later the Pope would excommunicate Bruce. Just over a month after the bloody deed at Dumfries, Bruce was in Scone and there Isabel, Countess of Buchan upheld her family's hereditary right to crown the kings of Scotland by placing a circlet of gold on his head. The horses the Countess had ridden to Scone she had stolen from her disapproving husband, a kinsman of John Comyn. At last Bruce was king, Robert, the first of that name, of Scotland. As Edward gathered his northern levies and prepared to come north yet again, his lieutenant in Scotland, Aymer de Valence Earl of Pembroke went in pusuit of Bruce and his small army. He met them at Methven and promptly drove them from the field in disorder. Bruce moved west into Argyll and in August the MacDougalls surprised and defeated his army at Dalrigh. The MacDougalls claimed their pursuit was so close that one of them was able to tear a brooch from Bruce's shoulder. Bruce may have lost a brooch at Dalrigh and soon was to see his wife, daughter Marjorie and brother Nigel fall into English hands, but he himself was still at large. He disappeared into the western isles and while passing a cold bitter winter there, he made a friend of Angus Og of the Isles and gained a promise of future support from Clan Donald that would serve him well at Bannockburn. 

Returning in February of 1307, Bruce slew the garrison of Turnberry Castle but was unable to take the keep itself. His brothers, Thomas and Alexander, landed in Galloway only to be captured by the MacDowalls who sent them on to Edward and instant exexcution. Of Bruce's four brothers only Edward was still alive and whatever Bruce's motives in chasing the throne of Scotland, be they ambition or patriotism, his family suffered cruelly for them. As his enemies closed in, Bruce sent his lieutenant James Douglas into Lanark and lands previously owned by the Douglases. Coming upon the English garrison of Douglas castle as they were at dinner, he locked them in the cellar and burned the castle down about their ears. The smell of burning human flesh intermingled with the bacon on which the English had planned to dine filled the air as the Douglas rode off and gave the incident the name by which history remembers it - the Douglas Larder. 

Bruce had defeated a small force of cavalry not far from Ayr and found his army growing as his undoubted ability to survive seemed to point to a possible final success. In May he challenged de Valence, as was the chivalric custom of the time, to fight him at a certain place and a certain time in a set-piece engagement. They met at Loudon Hill. Bruce had probably no more than a thousand men and was certainly outnumbered by his foe but he chose his ground well. He placed his schilltrons on a slope of mossy ground with ditches on the flanks. As de Valence's cavalry charged up the slope they lost momentum and slithered on the mossy ground. The schilltrons held and the English horse broke and then ran in front of the Scots' spears. The news of Loudon Hill made a dying Edward I rouse himself from his sickbed and swear to extirpate the Bruce himself. He came north once more bent on settling the matter once and for all, but he was too sick and too old and he died at Burgh on Sands, a few miles short of the Scottish border. I doubt many handkerchiefs would have been needed to wipe up the tears shed for him in Scotland.

By the spring of 1309 Bruce felt strong enough to call his first parliament. It met in St. Andrews and formally endorsed his authority. Some months later, the papal bull of excommunication notwithstanding, the Scots clergy also pledged him their support. Edward II did little to stop this astonishing run of success. Though he bore his father's name, he had little of his fire or strength. He took an army across the border in 1310, but the Bruce, scorching the earth behind him, retreated before it and it didn't tarry long in Scotland. Edward had trouble at home, with his great lords' hatred of his Gascon favourite Gaveston threatening to boil over into civil war. Bruce seized the opportunity to take the war into England and for the first time since the months of Wallace's triumph the skies of Northumberland and Cumbria were blackened by the smoke of the Scots' burnings. In 1312, Perth fell to the Scots: the Bruce himself divining the weak point in the defences, devising the plan of attack and leading his men, up to their necks in water, across the moat and over the walls one dark night. In the spring of 1314 the great keep of Linlithgow fell when a farmer jammed his haywain below the falling portcullis and the attacking Scots swarmed into the castle. Then Thomas Randolph led a handful of men up the sheer rockfaces on which Edinburgh castle is built, scaled the walls unnoticed and opened the gates for the army waiting outside. Of all the great fortresses in his kingdom, only Berwick and Stirling were still closed to Bruce. 

Edward Bruce was in charge of the siege of Stirling and the sedentary nature of his task was of little attraction to his warrior tastes. Sir Philip de Mowbray, commander of the castle, took advantage of Edward's restlessness to propose a knightly solution to the outcome of the siege. If a relieving English army had not approached to within three miles of the castle by Midsummer's Day 1314, he would surrender the fortress to his besieger. Edward Bruce, the valiant hero who had taken the Isle of Man by seaborne assault only two years previously, had probably seen his senses dulled by the boredom of siege warfare and he accepted Mowbray's offer with alacrity. Oh, to have been a fly on the wall when he reported to his brother. Did Robert the elder brother kick Edward the younger all around the room? Did he slap him vigorously? Did he curse him in words long forgotten? All the rollercoaster rides of the Bruce family's fortunes had been focussed on the pursuit of the crown of Scotland. It was on Bruce's head now but it would only remain there if the English could be forced to give up their claims to paramountcy in Scotland. Bruce knew, everyone knew, that ultimate success could only be won at the price of a humiliating English climbdown. In the climate of the times this could be achieved only by force of arms in a decisive battle and though Bruce understood that such a day must come, he had always hoped it would be later rather than sooner, after he had had time to prepare his kingdom for the onslaught. His brother pre-empted all that and literally set a time and a place: sometime before June 24nd 1314 and somewhere very near to Stirling castle. Edward II of England came with all the power he could muster, for he too was trapped by the challenge. The Bruce came with all those who would cling to him, incuding his foolish little brother. When the battle was joined it would be by the banks of a slow flowing stream by the name of the Bannockburn. 'Tis a fine-sounding name, is it not?