The miseries and oppressions which he had beheld his countrymen suffer in their unequal contest, the repeated defeats and misfortunes which they had undergone, proved to him so many incentives to bring them relief, and conduct them to vengeance against the haughty victor.

The circumstances which attended Bruce's first declaration are variously related; but we shall rather follow the account given by the Scottish historians; not that their authority is in general anywise comparable to that of the English, but because they may be supposed sometimes better informed concerning facts which so nearly interested their own nation.
Bruce, who had long harbored in his breast the design of freeing his enslaved country, ventured at last to open his mind to John Cummin, a powerful nobleman, with whom he lived in strict intimacy.

He found his friend, as he imagined, fully possessed with the same sentiments; and he needed to employ no arts of persuasion to make him embrace the resolution of throwing off, on the first favorable opportunity, the usurped dominion of the English.

But on the departure of Bruce, who attended Edward to London, Cummin, who either had all along dissembled with him, or began to reflect more coolly in his absence on the desperate nature of the undertaking, resolved to atone for his crime in assenting to this rebellion, by the merit of revealing the secret to the king of England.

Edward did not immediately commit Bruce to custody; because he intended at the same time to seize his three brothers, who resided in Scotland; and he contented himself with secretly setting spies upon him, and ordering all his motions to be strictly watched.