After the death of Alexander in 1286 Wishart was one of a panel of six Guardians, appointed to take charge of national affairs for the infant Margaret, Maid of Norway.

Edward simply sidestepped these objections; and with no means of settling the question by any internal process, he was duly accepted as overlord by guardians and claimants alike.

All attempts at dilution were resisted, causing Pope Nicholas IV to censure the clergy in 1289 for objecting to the promotion of foreigners to ecclesiastical office in Scotland.

Now Edward's conquest brought with it the prospect once again of submission to York or Canterbury and the appointment of English clergy to vacant Scottish benefices.

In May 1301 Edward himself wrote to Pope Boniface VIII in an obvious mood of frustration, requesting Wishart's removal from the see of Glasgow.

In the surrender of the patriotic party in February 1304 Wishart was initially condemned to banishment from Scotland for two or three years "on account of the great evils he has caused".

On 10 February 1306 Robert Bruce and a small party of supporters killed John Comyn, a leading rival, in the chapel of the Greyfriars, Dumfries.

The timber the English had given him to repair the bell tower of Glasgow Cathedral was used for making siege engines, and he took personal charge of the assault on Cupar Castle in Fife, "like a man of war", as the enemy later complained.

All these hopes and efforts were soon frustrated by the advance of an English army under Aymer de Valence in the summer of 1306: Bruce was defeated at the Battle of Methven, soon to be forced into hiding, and Wishart was captured at Cupar.

He returned to Scotland to live out his life in relative peace, finally dying in Glasgow in November 1316, "indisputedly one of the great figures in the struggle for Scottish independence, ... the patron and friend of Wallace and Bruce, the persistent opponent of Plantagenet pretensions, an unheroic hero of the long war".