Robert the Bruce

Robert the Bruce (1274-1329) is considered a great Scottish hero.  His name is evoked all over Scotland for his role in making that country independent from England.

(But wait, you say, aren't they the same country?  Emphatically no.  They are both part of the United Kingdom, several different kingdoms under one monarch.  It's been this way since 1603, when James VI of Scotland became James I of England.  From the Scottish point of view, Scotland took over England.  England has never seen it that way.)

So why is Robert called "the" Bruce?  Bruce was the name of his clan.  Last names were just coming in during the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries, so he might also be called Robert Bruce.  But because he was head of the Bruce clan, he was "the" Bruce.  If I were head of my own clan (my siblings would vociferously disagree), I would be Dale the Brittain.

Medieval Scotland had had its own kings, but in the second half of the thirteenth century the English, led by King Edward I,  conquered the kingdom.  Edward's father had already conquered the kingdom of Wales, naming baby Edward Prince of Wales.  So you see the island of Great Britain had not been the peaceful UK we now imagine it to be.

The Scots fought against the English in what were called the "wars of independence," culminating when Robert the Bruce, having killed his principal rival, had himself crowned king of Scotland in 1306.  He was descended in the female line from twelfth-century kings of Scotland.  The glorious (from a Scots point of view) battle of Bannockburn in 1314, where the English were routed, cemented his claim.

Scottish schoolchildren are taught all this in school, and most Scottish castles highlight their connections to Robert.  The church of Dunfermline, where he was buried, was rebuilt in the nineteenth century to celebrate him (image below, note it saying "Bruce king" at the top of the tower; it says Robert on the other side).  It shouldn't be a surprise that when England says it plans to leave the EU, the Scots are seriously rethinking this "united" kingdom.

After Bannockburn, Scotland stayed an independent kingdom until 1603.  Now relations were not always good with England, and there were such adventures as Mary, Queen of Scots, being held captive for years by her cousin Elizabeth I of England--Mary was James I/VI's mother.  But this seems like a good stopping point.

A good biography is by Michael Penman, Robert the Bruce, King of the Scots (Yale University Press, 2014).

 © C. Dale Brittain 2019

For more on Britain during the Middle Ages, see my ebook, Positively Medieval:  Life and Society in the Middle Ages.