" Ruthven approved this proposal; and
Wallace, deeming it not only the best way of silencing the pretensions
of those old disturbers of the public tranquility, but a happy
opportunity of putting the chief magistracy into the hands of a
confidant of their design, seconded the advice of Ruthven. Thus John
Cummin, Lord Badenoch, was invested with the regency, and immediately
dispatched to the army, to assume it as if in right of his being the
next heir to the throne in default of the Bruce.
Wallace sent Lord Douglas privately into Clydesdale, to inform Earl
Bothwell of his arrival, and to request his instant presence with the
Lanark division and his own troops on the banks of the Eske. Ruthven
ascended the Grampians, to call out the numerous clans of Perthshire,
and Wallace, with his prince, prepared themselves for meeting the
auxiliaries before the towers of Roslyn. Meanwhile, as Huntingtower
would be an insecure asylum for Helen, when it must be left to
domestics alone, Wallace proposed to Edwin that he should escort his
cousin to Braemar, and place her under the care of his mother and the
widowed countess. "Thither," continued he, "we will send Lady Isabella
also, should Heaven bless our arms at Roslyn.
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