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The House Of Bruce |
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Robert the Bruce 1306-1329
The Battle of Bannockburn
The new English King, the ineffectual Edward II, a pale shadow of his resolute father, responded belatedly by marching his forces into Scotland to meet Robert the Bruce. The two armies faced each other at the fateful battle of Bannockburn, near Stirling, on 24th June, 1314.
Edward II, said to be the great Edward I's only failure, was not the cunning military leader and general that his father had been. Although outnumbered three to one, the Bruce prepared for the impending battle carefully. The English would approach along the Roman road to Stirling crossing the Bannock Burn. Robert ordered pits to be dug beside the road. The Scottish army was then laid out in four groups using the lie of the land to its best advantage, to confine the vast English army within a very limited space.
One of the first of the English knights to arrive at Bannockburn, Henry de Bohun, nephew of the Earl of Hereford, sighted the figure of the King of Scots on a highland pony, battle-axe in hand. Enthusiastically hoping to cover himself in glory, de Bohun seized the moment and charged. The Bruce sat motionless and calm until the point of Bohun's lance was only feet away, then he pulled his horse quickly aside and delivered a shattering blow which suceeded in carving both de Bohun's helmet and skull in two.
This pre-battle encounter and Bruce's bravery has become legendary. On returning to his army, he complained that he had broken the shaft of his "good battle-axe" on Bohun's skull. Other English knights that had followed him now fell among the pot-holes and spiked iron balls previously laid by the Scots and a hasty retreat was called.
On the morning of the battle, the Scots advance was lead by the King's brother, Edward Bruce. Walter the Steward and Thomas Randolph controlled the left, with Bruce and the Highlanders closely in the rear.
In the first encounter of the battle which was to be ever after renowned as Scotland's most famous victory, the Earl of Gloucester charged upon Edward Bruce's division, Randolph and Steward advanced on the left to join the melee. The English withdrew for a short respite, but the Scots line continued their advance slowly and determinedly. Edward's army was then contained in an even tighter space, rendering it impossible for him to use his infantry who were then packed impotent behind their own cavalry.
The Statue of Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn
The Scots pressed in upon the English resulting in the English infantry breaking and taking flight toward the river. They were pursued by the exultant Scots, and mass slaughter ensued, many died in the Bannock burn which was now ran red with blood, congested with the corpses of English dead.
On realising continued resistance was futile, Edward II, guarded by a company of knights, fled towards Stirling, but the town refused to admit him. The King of England was forced into a hasty and ignominious flight to Linlithgow. He finally made it back across the border to safety, but had been thoroughly humiliated. Robert the Bruce had won a famous and resounding victory and was now the incontestable King of Scotland.
King Robert now now faced with the difficult tasks of attempting to obtain the King of England's recognition of him as King of an independent Scotland, having an heir to the Scottish throne and getting the Pope to lift his excommunication for the murder of Comyn, none of which was to prove easily achieved.
Robert's only child was a daughter, Marjorie, born of his first marriage. Fearing to leave the crown in the hands of a woman, unheard of at the time, the Scottish Parliament decreed that in the event of the king dying without a male heir the throne of Scotland should pass to his younger brother Edward Bruce.
Edward Bruce himself had designs of his own on Ireland and accordingly lead a campaign into that country. Robert ventured to Ireland in support of his brother. Edward was killed in battle at Dundalk, leaving the Scottish throne bereft of a successor. Since Marjorie Bruce had died in childbirth some two years previously, her young son, Robert Stewart, was appointed as his grandfather's heir. In 1320 Bruce's second wife, Elizabeth de Burgh, the daughter of the powerful Richard de Burgh, Earl of Ulster, after many years of being barren, conceived and gave birth to a daughter, followed in March, 1324, by a long awaited son and heir, christened David, for the Bruce's direct ancestor, David I.
Edward II, in common with his father before him, stubbornly refused to accept Bruce as de facto King of Scotland. To curb what they saw as his arrogance the Scots raided and pillaged northern England.
The English King reacted by amassing an army and marching into Scotland. Wily as ever, Robert embarked on a 'scorched earth' policy, laying waste the land before the English army who by the time they reached Edinburgh were starving and forced to return home. The Pope continued to refuse to recognise Robert as the lawful King of Scotland.
The Declaration of Arbroath
In April, 1320, the Declaration of Arbroath was signed by eight Scottish Earls and forty-five barons. It was a dignified plea to the Pope to recognise Scotland as an independent nation with Bruce at its leader. It asserted proudly:- "For, as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom - for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself."
Four years later the Pope addressed
Bruce as King of Scotland.
With the inexorable march of time, an enemy not even he could defy, the great Robert the Bruce, now in his fifties, grew increasingly ill and infirm. Though purported to have been affected with leprosy, it seems more likely that that he was suffering from scurvy, a common complaint at the time. After suffering a stroke and on his deathbed, Robert knew he would be unable to fulfill his solemn vow to go on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He asked his life-long friend, Sir James Douglas, to carry his heart there instead. The greatest of Scotland's Kings died on 7th June, 1329 at the manor of Cardross, Dunbartonshire and was interred at Dunfermline Abbey.
The tomb of the Robert the Bruce
In the year following Robert the Bruce's death, the faithful James Douglas set out for the Holy Land in fulfillment of his oath to the dying King, taking his heart with him in a silver casket.
In the course of his journey, while staying in Seville, Spain, the city was attacked by Moors. Douglas, in the thick of the fighting and deserted by his Spanish allies, threw the heart of the Bruce deep into the melee, biding it "Go first as thou hast always done." Douglas himself was killed in the ensueing fighting and his body was returned to his native Scotland.
The heart of Robert the Bruce was carried back to Scotland by Sir William Keith of Galston, where it was finally laid to rest at the Abbey of Melrose.
Robert the Bruce was succeeded by his young son as David II