Clan Sweeney supporters of the powerful MacDougall Lords of Lorne who supported John Balliol as patriots, as long as John was king of Scotland. After the murder of John Comyn, the nephew of Balliol, by Bruce in 1306, the First War of Scottish Independence became at one and the same time a civil war. The Balliol and Comyn parties taking the side of the English in opposition to Bruce, crowned Robert I of Scotland on 25 March 1306. This was an era of constantly shifting alliances, and in 1301 John MacSween was in alliance with Aonghus Óg Mac Domhnaill, Lord of Islay
History of the Scots Guards (1805–1913) gained its second Colonel-in-Chief, the newly crowned George V. In 1911, small detachments of the Scots Guards were involved in a decidedly unpleasant event, the Siege of Sidney Street. In 1910 a group of Latvian anarchists had attempted to rob a jewellers shop in Houndsditch in December 1910, and it had ended in the murder of three policemen and two being seriously wounded. A number of the gang were soon captured and on the 1 January 1911, an informant had told the police that a small number of the gang were residing in 100 Sidney Street. On the 3 January,