After fleeing the field and with the bitter taste of Sir Giles Argentine's farewell  in his mouth, Edward reached Stirling castle. Mowbray denied him entrance, and rightly so, for the rules of the game clearly precluded such a thing. Edward turned his horse around and with his knights by his side rode for Dunbar. He shook off the pursuit of the fiery James Douglas and the handful of Scots horsemen who had ridden after the English king determined to see him captive or slain. At Dunbar he took ship for the south and the faithful knights who had protected him in his flight were left to find their own way home through hostile countryside. His stock had never been high in his own land and the lack of great lords who had accompanied him to the fight should have told him his future prospects were dim. Yet he was obdurate in defeat and the war continued. In later years, after the shock of Bannockburn had worn off, he came north on abortive attempts to retake Berwick from the victorious Scots. He failed in that task and no major battles were fought, the Scots preferring to launch diversionary raids into the north of England. For many years the northern counties of Northumberland, Cumbria and even Yorkshire were wasted and burned with great regularity. 

In time, a vindictive wife and her lover had Edward deposed and then forced to abdicate in favour of his infant son, the future Edward III. The ex-king was shunted from dungeon to dungeon across England and whatever his faults only the hardest of hearts could fail to feel pity for him in the squalid dishonour of his last few years. His life ended in 1327, in that most intimate of regicides when a red-hot poker was forced up his anus murdering him, no doubt painfully, without leaving a mark of violence. When he reached heaven or hell or purgatory or whatever part of the afterlife the Plantagenets were consigned to after their sojourns in this world, I warrant the fire in his arse was nought compared to the burning of his ears that his father subjected him to.

The Bruce died in 1329, after the Pope had lifted the Bull of Excommunication and a week before another Bull was issued recognising him and his heirs as the annointed kings of Scotland. He was 54 years old and had been blessed in his twilight years by the birth of a son. He was doubly blessed in that he died before he could witness the trials his son's minority and final reign would bring to the land Bruce had taken by the sword at such dear personal and familial cost. The king had always wished to go on crusade and when he died Sir James Douglas, who had been knighted in the New Park so many years before, took his master's heart embalmed in a silver casket to the fight against the Moslems or Saracens or Paynim as they were known in those days.

The Douglas didn't have to go all the way to the Holy Land for Christian Spain was still in the thrall of the followers of Mohammed and there was work aplenty for his sword in the Iberian lands. There one dark day when the tide of Islam was running strong, the Douglas and his men faced a desperate situation so far from their native glens and lands they knew so well. Their Christian Spanish allies deserted them and left them to face the Saracen host alone. No doubt the Douglas cursed his erstwhile allies as with his experienced warrior's eye he studied the enemy arrayed against him seeking some weakness or opening through which escape might be effected. Seeing none, perhaps he looked back at his men and sought slient permission with his eyes from those who had come far in the service of the heart of their dead king. The Moslems waited, the sun glitttering on their spike-topped helmets and scimitar blades. Perhaps the Douglas smiled when he saw the agreement in the countenances of his men, for he turned to face the enemy and taking the silver-bound casketed heart of Bruce from around his neck flung it with all his might into the heart of the enemy line. Shouting, "Go first as you always did!", he rushed forward followed by his men and disappeared in a whirlwind of Saracen blades.

Such was the love that the Bruce could inspire in his followers. Although he was not the first man to bear the title King of Scotland, he was the first of that name to rule a political entity that we would recognise today. He was without doubt the greatest of Scotland's kings and he stands astride our history like a colossus with one foot in a fragmented feudal past and the other in a united nation that could face the future secure in its own identity. The independence he won would be lost by his successors again and again and the Scots people would be no strangers to English invasion and occupation in the centuries to come. They would never submit in their hearts, though, to English domination. Finally in 1603 on the childless death of Elizabeth I virgin Queen of England, James VI of Scotland, descended from the Bruce via the marriage of his daughter Marjorie to Walter the Steward, became the joint king of both England and Scotland. I wonder how many times Edward I "Hammer of the Scots" turned in his grave that day.