Frasers of Philorth > Volume 2

98 APPENDIX OF CADET FAMILIES.
Upon the death of Alexander in., who was killed by his horse falling-
over the rocks at Kinghorn, in Fife, on the 19th March 1286, the Prelates
and Barons of Scotland assembled in Parliament or Council at Scone, on the
2d April, and appointed six guardians to govern the kingdom, until the
young Queen Margaret should arrive from Norway and assume the Crown, 1
to which her right, as grand-daughter of Alexander in., failing issue of his
body surviving him, had been established by the Parliament held at Scone
on the 5th February 1283-4. 2
These Guardians or Eegents were : —
For the district to the northward of the river Forth —
William Fraser, Bishop of St. Andrews.
Duncan, Earl of Fife.
Alexander de Comyn, Earl of Buchan.
And for that to the south of the Forth —
Eobert Wisheart, Bishop of Glasgow.
John de Comyn, Lord of Badenoch.
James, Senescallus or Steward of Scotland.
In the course of the next two or three years, however, the number of
these guardians was reduced to four, as the Earl of Buchan died in 1288 ;
and on the 25th of September in the same year, Duncan, Earl of Fife, was
waylaid and murdered at Petpolloch, by Sir Patrick de Abernethy and Sir
Walter de Percy, while Sir William de Abernethy watched another road which
the Earl might have taken, and is asserted by historians to have been the
instigator of the crime, 3 although in the account of the Abernethy family,
it has been shown that his elder brother, Sir Hugh de Abernethy, was the
true originator of the outrage, and Sir William, if present at all, only one of
the instruments.
No fresh appointments were made to fill the places of the two deceased
guardians : as by the constitution of the Eegency both had belonged to the
northern division of the kingdom, the Bishop of St. Andrews was left sole
Regent of that large district ; and in virtue of his representing the royal
1 Fordun, Gesta Annalia, No. lxxxi.
2 Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, vol. i. p. 82.
3 Fordun, Gesta Annalia, No. lxxxii.