But William Wallace by his life and still more by his
death had lit a fire which might never be quenched. Soon the Scotch found
another champion in the person of Robert Bruce. Edward I, now old and broken,
marched against him, but died before reaching the border. The weakness of his
son, Edward II, permitted the Scotch, ably led by Bruce, to win the signal
victory of Bannockburn, near Stirling Castle. Here the Scottish spearmen drove
the English knighthood into ignominious flight and freed their country from its
foreign overlords.
SCOTTISH INDEPENDENCE
The battle of Bannockburn made a nation. A few years
afterwards the English formally recognized the independence of the northern
kingdom. So the great design of Edward I to unite all the peoples of Britain
under one government had to be postponed for centuries. [17]
[17] In 1603 A.D. James VI of Scotland ascended the throne
of England as James I. In 1707 A.D. the two countries adopted a plan of union
which gave them a common Parliament and one flag.
IRELAND
No one kingdom ever arose in Ireland out of the numerous tribes
into which the Celtic-speaking inhabitants were divided. The island was not
troubled, however, by foreign invaders till the coming of the Northmen in the
ninth century. The English, who first entered Ireland during the reign of
Henry II, did not complete its conquest till the seventeenth century. Ireland
by its situation could scarcely fail to become an appanage of Great Britain,
but the dividing sea has combined with differences in race, language, and
religion, and with English misgovernment, to prevent anything like a genuine
union of the conquerors and the conquered.
