Ayrshire > Volume 1

ROBERT THE BRUCE 105
well with the English Sovereign. Its Governor was Sir
Gilbert de Carrick. He gave Seton shelter, and. after
a fashion, he defended his charge against the English
force that invested it, but it was not long before the
castle fell into the hands of the enemy. It is said, on
good authority, to have been " pusillanimously " given
up, and, according to evidence under a commission of
the Great Seal, " the delivery of Sir Christopher de
Seton to the English was imputed to Sir Gilbert de
Carrick." The remission to Sir Gilbert, at the instance
of the English Sovereign, certainly points in that
direction. Barbour avers that Seton was actually
betrayed by a person of the name of Macnab, " a disciple
of Judas, a false traitor that aye was of his dwelling
night and day." Tradition has it that, as the price of
his perfidy, Macnab received in gift a stretch of land on
the shores of the loch, and some countenance is given
to the story by the fact that part of a farm at the lower
end of the loch is still called Macnabston. If Barbour's
version be true, Macnab was one of the followers and
domestics of Sir Christopher ; hence the deeper dye of
the " traitoury." It is not improbable that Macnab
may have been a tool of the governor of the castle,
that there was a complete understanding between the
two, and that the pusillanimous defence, the fall of
the fortress, and the capture of Seton, were all parts of
the plan by which Sir Gilbert de Carrick was to ensure
his own safety.
However it happened, the castle fell into the hands
of the enemy, and Sir Christopher had to pay the price
of his association with Bruce. According to one
story, he was conveyed to London and executed
there ; according to another, and a more probable, he
met his death at Dumfries, not far from the spot that
had been desecrated by the killing of the Red Comyn.
Bruce marked his sense of his gallantry, and his
appreciation of the good work he had done for the cause,
by erecting a chapel at Dumfries to his memory, where
mass was said for his soul. This must necessarily have