30 SCOTLAND ILLUSTRATED. 



first who responded to the royal summons was the earl of Orkney, who had 

 married the king's sister, and now arrived with a powerful subsidy of hardy 

 mountaineers. Numerous barons and knights, also, from Sweden, Denmark, 

 and other parts beyond sea some for affection to the king and his cause, 

 some for pay swelled the amount of the Scottish host. So great were the 

 numbers that arrived from all parts, that, on the day of rendezvous appointed 

 by the king, sixty thousand warriors on foot, and three thousand horse, with 

 a long roll of knights and squires, made their entrance into Perth. Ronald, 

 Lord of the Isles, who governed the " wild Scots," as Froissard terms them, 

 and whom only they would obey, was especially invited to attend the king in 

 Parliament, and brought with him three thousand of the " wildest of his 

 countrymen." Unhappily for the latter chief and his sovereign's cause, there 

 was a deadly feud between him and the powerful earl of Ross, by whose 

 machinations Ronald was murdered by a faithless harper, while lodged in the 

 monastery of Elcho, near Perth.* Ross, justly dreading the king's resentment, 

 immediately retired with his followers ; while the men of the Isles, disgusted 

 by the base assassination of their chief, and viewing the disaster as a bad omen 

 for the cause, broke up, and deserting the royal standard, retired in disorder to 

 their native mountains. The king, though disconcerted, and greatly weakened 

 by this desertion, which lost him the service of two of the most effective chiefs 

 and their clans, resolved to proceed; and on the disastrous field, near Durham, 

 that closed the expedition, left the best part of that noble army which inarched 

 under the royal standard from Perth. 



The Carse of Gowrie, in fertility of soil and beauty of scenery, may be not 

 inaptly designated the Val d'Arno of Scotland. The interval between Perth and 

 Dundee, a space of twenty-two miles, is filled up with a continued series of highly 

 cultivated and productive farms, noblemen's seats, populous villages, and garden 

 and orchard grounds. On the left, on leaving Perth, is the romantic Craig of 

 Kinnoul, with Kinfauns Castle beneath, sheltered in luxuriant woods, and over- 

 looking the Tay. Among the antiquities preserved in this castle, is Charteris's 

 sword, five feet nine inches long. This formidable weapon is said to have belonged 

 to Sir Thomas Charteris, or Thomas de Longueville, the ancient proprietor of 

 Kinfauns. He was a native of France, and representative of a family well 

 known in that country ; but at the close of the thirteenth century, when at the 

 court of Philip the Fair, having a dispute with one of the noblemen, he slew 

 him in the king's presence. Being refused pardon for the rash and bloody act, 

 he betook himself to the high seas, and under the name of the Red Reaver, 



Froissavd's Chron. c. cxxxv. 



