and Edward, having brought the whole kingdom to a seeming state of
tranquillity, returned to the south with his army. There was a stone to
which the popular superstition of the Scots paid the highest veneration:
all their kings were seated on it when they received the rite of
inauguration: an ancient tradition assured them that, wherever this
stone was placed, their nation should always govern: and it was
carefully preserved at Scone, as the true, palladium of their monarchy,
and their ultimate resource amidst all their misfortunes. Edward got
possession of it, and carried it with him to England.[*] He gave orders
to destroy the records, and all those monuments of antiquity which might
preserve the memory of the independence of the kingdom, and refute the
English claims of superiority. The Scots pretend that he also destroyed
all the annals preserved in their convents: but it is not probable that
a nation, so rude and unpolished, should be possessed of any history
which deserves much to be regretted. The great seal of Bailol was
broken; and that prince himself was carried prisoner to London, and
committed to custody in the Tower. Two years after he was restored
to liberty, and submitted to a voluntary banishment in France; where,
without making any further attempts for the recovery of his royalty,
he died in a private station. Earl Warrenne was left governor of
Scotland:[**] Englishmen were intrusted with the chief offices: and
Edward, flattering himself that he had attained the end of all his
wishes, and that the numerous acts of fraud and violence, which he had
practised against Scotland, had terminated in the final reduction of
that kingdom, returned with his victorious army into England.

* Walsing. p. 68. Trivet, p. 299.

** Rymer, vol. ii. p. 726. Trivet, p. 295.

An attempt, which he made about the same time, for the recovery of
Guienne, was not equally successful. He sent thither an army of seven
thousand men, under the command of his brother, the earl of Lancaster.
That prince gained at first some advantages over the French at Bordeaux:
but he was soon after seized with a distemper, of which he died at
Bayonne. The command devolved on the earl of Lincoln, who was not able
to perform any thing considerable during the rest of the campaign.[*]

But the active and ambitious spirit of Edward, while his conquests
brought such considerable accessions to the English monarchy, could not
be satisfied, so l