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cere wish that the public may encourage the undertaking of my friend, Dr. Jamieson, who has issued proposals for publishing an accurate edition of his poem, and of Blind Harry's Wallace. The only good edition of The Bruce was published by Mr. Pinkerton, in 3 vols., in 1790; and, the learned editor having had no personal access to consult the manuscript, it is not without errors; and it has besides become scarce. OfWallace there is no tolerable edition; yet these two poems do no small honour to the early state of Scottish poetry, and The Bruce is justly regarded as containing authentic historical facts.

The following list of the slain at Bannockburn, extracted from the Continuator of Trivet's Annals, will show the extent of the national calamity.

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And in sum, there were there slain, along with the Earl of Gloucester, forty-two barons and bannerets. The number of earls, barons, and bannerets made captive, was twenty-two, and sixty-eight knights. Many clerks and esquires were also

* Supposed Clinton.

† Maule.

there slain or taken. Roger de Northburge, keeper of the king's signet, (Custos Targiæ Domini Regis,) was made prisoner with his two clerks Roger de Wakenfelde and Thomas de Switon, upon which the king caused a seal to be made, and entitled it his privy seal, to distinguish the same from the signet so lost. The Earl of Hereford was exchanged against Bruce's Queen, who had been detained in captivity ever since the year 1306. The Targia, or signet, was restored to England through the intercession of Ralph de Monthermer, ancestor of Lord Moira, who is said to have found favour in the eyes of the Scottish king.—Continuation of Trivet's Annals, Hall's edit. Oxford, 1712, vol. II. p. 14.

Such were the immediate consequences of the field of Ban nockburn. Its more remote effects, in completely establishing the national independence of Scotland, afford a boundless field for speculation.

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