History of the house and race of Douglas and Angus

HOUSE 0# DOUGLAS. jgj)
claim; to whom also, and to his posterity, they all, and Earl
William's own predecessors, had sworn obedience, and con-
tinued it the whole time of his life, and of his son David
the space of sixty-four years.
To which Robert Bruce, and not to David of Huntington,
Robert Stewart was to succeed; wherefore the Earl's chiefest
friends, George and John Dunbar, Earls of March and Mur-
ray, his-br others- in-law by his first wife, and Robert Erskine
his assured friend, keeper of the three principal castles in
Scotland, Dumbarton, Stirling and Edinburgh, dissuaded him
from it; and so he was contented to desist, and joining very
willingly with the rest of the nobility, accompanied him to
Scoon, and assisted at his coronation, being no less accept-
able and commended for his modest acquiescing, than he had
been before displeasing for his unseasonable motion: for the
which, in token of his good-will, and that he might so much
the more tie the Earl to him, the new king bestows two very
honourable gifts upon him; his eldest daughter Eupham on tfic*
EarFs son James, that failing heirs-male, the crown might so
fall to his house; the other benefit was bestowed upon the Earl
himself, the marriage of Margaret Stewart Countess of Mar
and Angus, daughter and heir to Earl Thomas. This Coun-
tess of Mar and Angus did bear to this Earl, George Earl of
Angus, that was married to one of King Robert Ill's daugh-
ters, as we shall see in the house of Angus. It is known,
that these two lived after from thenceforth in good friendship,
as prince and subject, without suspicion, grudgej or eye-list
on either party; for neither did the king remember it as an
aspiring, whereby to hold a continual suspicious eye over
him, neither did he fear the king as jealous of it, or as esteem-
ing that he had suffered wrong in the repulse, nor seeking
any means to prosecute it further, laying aside all quarrels
with the cause in sincerity on both sides.
This should be the practice of all honest her.rts, and is
the only means to end all debates, entertain peace, and keep
human society, far contrary to this now called wisdom, of
diffidence, distrust, jealousy, curbing and keeping under thos*}
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