After the murder of John Comyn, the nephew of the former King John Balliol, by Robert Bruce and his supporters in 1306, the Scottish War of Independence was at one and the same time a civil war, with the Balliol and Comyn parties taking the side of the English. In the winter of 1314 the Scottish Parliament, the first to meet after King Robert's great victory at the Battle of Bannockburn, pronounced formal sentence of forfeiture against all those who held land in Scotland but continued to fight on the side of the English. Thus was created a class of nobility known as the 'disinherited', old Balliol loyalists who would not be reconciled with the Bruce party.