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
Removal of the Stone of Scone in 1950 I of England (Longshanks) in 1296 during the struggles against English invasion, which historians call the Scottish Wars of Independence as a spoil of war, kept in Westminster Abbey in London and fitted into King Edward's Chair. Subsequent English and then British monarchs were crowned sitting upon the chair and Stone. At the time, the Stone was viewed as a symbol of Scottish nationhood; by removing the Stone to London, Edward I was declaring himself 'King of the Scots'. In 1950, Ian Hamilton, a student at the University of Glasgow, approached Gavin Vernon with a plan to remove the Stone