In 'The best book on Scottish history ever written' - Robert Bruce & The Community of the Realm Of Scotland, Professor Barbour dedicates a chapter to trying to asses the character of Robert Bruce, King of Scots.

 

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It is easy to strip away the legend surrounding some notable figure from the distant past, but clearing away the legend does not necessarily reveal the man. Nothing that has been stated as a fact about Bruce in the foregoing pages, nor any speech or writing attributed to him, is legendary in quality. But it must still remain doubtful whether we have come much nearer to the king's true personality. To some extent our view of Bruce will always depend on how much credence we give to Barbour. If we choose to ignore Barbour altogether, as we may, we shall be left with a jejune assortment of glimpses in record and chronicle, and a few authentic utterances. These might carry more weight than Barbour, but they would not add up to a portrait. Barbour is far from being legend, but we need to remember that for him Bruce was the hero of a work of art. Consciously or unconsciously, he emphasized the chivalrous qualities in Bruce, and in Douglas, his other hero. More seriously than this, he overemphasized the chivalrous qualities of the age in which Bruce and Douglas lived. It was an age in which a king of England was murdered with a red-hot iron plunged through his rectum into his bowels, in which two knights at the court of Philip IV, because of an affair with the king's daughters-in-law, were flayed alive - one of them having been extradited by Edward II for the purpose, much to the indignation (may it be said to their credit) of ordinary English people. It was, though not of course uniquely, an age of horrors, of brutality, of intrigue and squalor. Much of this Barbour passes over. He touches on the miseries, but he dwells on the splendours.

 

Nevertheless, on the score of general reliability Barbour must be reckoned a biographer, not a romancer. How much would we feel we knew of Dr Johnson were it not for Boswell? It would not be absurd to ask a similar question with regard to Bruce and Barbour. Of course, Barbour lacks the pages of dialogue recalled verbatim, the mass of convincing detail, which constitute the chief reason for reading Boswell and believing his portrait to be a very close approach to truth. But Barbour, though only a boy when Bruce died, was a most careful and exact recorder, especially of names, personalities, incidents and points of detail. We shall not be on unsafe ground if we accept Barbour's portrait of the king, even though we must correct it by more reliable evidence wherever that is necessary and possible. He shows us a man at once humane and kingly, generous and firm of purpose. Barbour was not often embarrassed by the need to excuse or explain away some act which detracted from his hero's stature. The execution of the burgesses at Perth in 1313 was played down by Barbour in the words 'bot thair wes few slayne', which were vague enough not to be untrue. The apparent fact that the king singled out the Scots for deterrent punishment, letting the English go free, is actually contradicted by Barbour's statement 'that thai war kynde to the cuntre he wist, and had of thame pite'. The king's refusal to intervene to save Sir David Brechin's life clearly troubled Barbour, and he passed rapidly on from this sorry business to tell an anecdote of Bruce's unusual generosity towards Sir Ingram de Umfraville. In these somewhat pathetic evasions or discomfitures of Barbour lies one of our surest pieces of evidence of Bruce's essential goodness.

 

The king's sense of humour comes out even in dry official documents, but is best remembered in his reply to the nobles who rebuked him for risking his life in the encounter with Sir Henry de Bohun at Bannockburn. His immense courage is attested by the whole of his career. Patience, on the other hand, he was forced to learn, yet once learned it became his most dominant characteristic. Men trusted his word and his judgements, so that decisions and laws made by him were respected and, in after years, invented in order to be respected. In a period when there were virtually no professionals, generalship was not of a high order. But modern military experts agree that Bruce's handling of Bannockburn was masterly. The secret of his success here lay in the fact that behind his tactical brilliance and superlative gifts of leadership Bruce had an exceptionally good grasp of strategy: he always knew what should take priority. Directly or indirectly, Barbour's portrait gives us these qualities. His terms of reference forbade him to write of shortcomings, such as the evident rashness and hot-headedness of Bruce's earlier years. Barbour hardly brings out Bruce's ambition, yet it cannot be doubted that from young manhood Bruce was determined to play a leading part. The truth about his submission to Edward 1 in 1302 has now been established in sufficient detail to disprove the old charges of treachery and double-dealing, yet the fact remains that Bruce did change sides two years in advance of his colleagues. Nothing but frustrated ambition will easily account for his conduct. Barbour also falls to mention, presumably because word and concept were alike lacking in his time, one of Bruce's greatest gifts, the imaginative quality of his mind which allowed him to be revolutionary in more than just the political sense.

 

Finally, we must return to Robert Bruce's kingliness. It was suggested earlier that the key to much of his conduct may be sought in the background, at once aristocratic and royal, in which his grandfather was brought up and lived out his long career. There is an unmistakable assurance about the manner in which Bruce assumed kingship even though he reached the throne by a revolutionary coup. Even his flight in the heather did not snuff out his claims to royalty, though the news of it inspired mocking ballads in England:' and became common gossip as far away as Italy.' The regia dignitas of Scotland was never in safer hands than those of King Robert 1. Barbour convincingly makes the magnates gathered at his deathbed mourn their lord as a great exponent of kingship and kingliness: 'for better governour than he mycht in na cuntre fundyn be'.

 

Let us look at two brief letters of which King Robert was at least the official author. They have not been mentioned earlier, and one was scarcely known at all until Professor Duncan brought it to light. The first was addressed to Edward II at some unknown date, the second to the kings and people of Ireland, probably in 1315, preparatory to Edward Bruce's expedition.

 

"To the most sincere prince, the Lord Edward, by God's grace illustrious king of England, Robert, by the same grace king of Scots, sends greetings in Him by whom the thrones of rulers are governed.

Since while agreeable peace prevails the minds of the faithful are at rest, the Christian way of life is furthered, and all the affairs of holy mother church and of all kingdoms are everywhere carried on more prosperously, we in our humility have judged it right to entreat of your highness most earnestly that, having before your eyes the righteousness you owe to God and to the people, you desist from persecuting us and disturbing the people of our realm, so that there may be an end of slaughter and shedding of Christian blood. Everything that we ourselves and our people by their bodily service and contributions of wealth can do, we are now, and shall be, prepared to do sincerely and honourably for the sake of good peace and to earn perpetual grace for our souls. If it should be agreeable to your will to hold negotiations with us upon these matters, let your royal will be communicated to us in a letter by the hands of the bearer of this present letter.

 

 

 

The king sends greetings to all the kings of Ireland, to the prelates and clergy, and to the inhabitants of all Ireland, his friends.

 

Whereas we and you and our people and your people, free since ancient times, share the same national ancestry and are urged to come together more eagerly and joyfully in friendship by a common language and by common custom, we have sent over to you our beloved kinsmen, the bearers of this letter, to negotiate with you in our name about permanently strengthening and maintaining inviolate the special friendship between us and you, so that with God's will our nation may be able to recover her ancient liberty. Whatever our envoys or one of them may on our behalf conclude with you in this matter we shall ratify and uphold in the future."

 

 

Does either of these letters give us the real Bruce? Are they, in the most personal sense, authentic, or are they both merely the products of an embryonic 'foreign office' with an eye to the main chance? In view of the extremely personal quality of royal government in the fourteenth century, it would probably be wrong to put these letters too far from the king himself At the very least they show two aspects of his policy, and give examples of his method of approach. There is no reason to suspect Bruce's sincerity in his professions of peace towards England, so long as it was peace between independent monarchies and not simply submission. And it seems typical that he should write direct to the only person who could take the initiative on the other side. If Professor Duncan is right in thinking that the letter to Edward II belongs to the period of the Declaration of Arbroath, possibly composed by the same author, then the seriousness of purpose underlying the Scottish king's appeal would be confirmed.

 

The letter to Ireland is a very different matter. The invasion of Ireland hangs over Bruce's career as a large question-mark. Some English historians dismiss it as nothing more than deliberate trouble-making, and dwell upon the horrors and miseries that followed from King Robert's perilous and futile march to Limerick and from the Scots' whole sojourn in Ireland between May 1315 and October 1318. One or two even contrive to suggest that this unique and short-lived Scottish invasion ended a halcyon period of Anglo-lrish harmony, and introduced a note of altogether unusual barbarity into the history of a nation which had hitherto been ruled and protected by the English Crown with motherly solicitude.

 

The question must nevertheless be asked, was Bruce's motive plain aggression, the sort of aggression upon which successful revolutionary nationalism so often embarks ? The affair hardly admits of any simple explanation. A powerful resurgence of Celtic tradition and Irish national feeling would have caused an explosion regardless of Scottish intervention. Behind the obvious propaganda appeal of Bruce's letter lay important truths. Scotland and Ireland did share in part a common ancestry and culture, and the Irish did yearn to be free of foreign rule. The example set by Bruce in his own kingdom was bound to be infectious, and it was understandable that some of the Irish leaders should fancy that an answer to all their pent-up aspirations lay in Edward Bruce and a few thousand veterans of Loudoun Hill, Brander and Bannockburn.

 

Equally, there is no doubt that contemporary observers, both in England and in Ireland, believed the Scots were bent on conquest. Their invasion threatened to wrest the lordship of Ireland totally from the control of the king of England and create a fresh kingdom of Ireland under a Scottish king, Edward Bruce. Moreover, in May 1315 when he crossed to Ireland to embark on his three-year adventure, it must have seemed well within the bounds of probability that Edward Bruce would succeed to the throne of Scotland. He was duly crowned king of Ireland at Dundalk about mid-June, 1315, obviously with the knowledge and acquiescence of his brother. Robert 1 had an acute awareness of the dangers of a hostile, of the value of a friendly, Ireland. For three years from 1315 a significant part of the military resources of Scotland (chiefly veteran commanders and soldiers, but also weaponry, shipping and supplies) was diverted to the Irish enterprise. Thomas Randolph was involved from the outset, and when the Scots invasion appeared to be penned within the borders of Ulster Randolph went back to Scotland to fetch reinforcements (December 1315) whose numbers enabled the invaders to penetrate as far south as north Leinster. Had the Scots intended merely to secure their western flank by neutralizing Ulster this southward push would be hard to explain. It is true that after outfacing, near Ardscull in Co. Kildare, an Anglo-lrish force weakened by rivalries and jealousies, Edward was compelled to withdraw northward again.`

 

Stalemate ensued, but instead of Robert I's deciding to cut his losses and abandon his brother to the common fate of so many invaders of Ireland he personally led an army of veterans to Ulster in January 1317, and in company with Edward and Randolph undertook a bold and dangerous operation, the aim of which was clearly to rouse the clans of central and southern Ireland in support of 'King Edward' and to amass sufficient forces to drive the English government out of Dublin. A winter of dearth and disease was not well chosen for this venture, which with hindsight seems more desperate than it may have appeared to those who were there. Save in Ulster, where a few families such as Mandevilles, Bissets and Logans fought on the Scottish side for some of the time, the Anglo-lrish opposed the Scots, only isolated dissidents like the Lacys of Meath or Gilbert de la Roche joining Bruce because of private quarrels. The Dublin administration, whether under Edmund Butler or more vigorously under Roger Mortimer, could afford to wait, making a Fabian virtue out of financial necessity. For the Scots everything depended on the Irish kings, greater and lesser, uniting in the common cause of Irish independence and being motivated by a shared enmity towards the English. But of this they were quite incapable. O'Neill merely excited jealousy, rival branches of the kingly family of Connacht could not both receive satisfaction from 'King Edward', and on the banks of the Shannon near Limerick the Scots army was confronted by a hostile Muirchertach O'Brien where they had hoped to find friends and allies. By May 1317 the king of Scots, his force decimated by sickness and hunger, judged it prudent to return home.

 

It has been said that 'when Robert [bruce] sought the backing of "all the kings of Ireland", he was asking for a unity quite foreign to Gaelic Ireland'. It is not easy, however, to accept that the king of Scots was so naive, so ignorant of the truth about Irish society and politics, that the failure of the Irish kings or chiefs to rally behind his brother took him utterly by surprise. Robert I was a realist, born and brought up among people who knew Ireland well and, indeed, thoroughly at home in a region of Scotland, Carrick and Galloway, which must have resembled northern Ireland very closely. The establishment of his brother as king of Ireland would certainly have suited Robert I's book. If the English government was drawn into costly diversions of Irish resources which it would otherwise use against the Scots, if the English could be harried not only in Ireland itself but by an Irish-based invasion of north Wales, above all if the subjugation at least of Ulster could, along with the recovery of Man, secure for the Scots unchallenged command of the narrow seas between Ireland and Scotland, then a substantial, though not reckless, investment of ships, troops and leadership in Ireland would pay off.`

 

As for the long term, and the deeper implications, that seems a different matter. In the fifteen years between Bannockburn and King Robert's death he devoted a mere few months to personal interventions on Irish soil, and the Scots as a whole were active in Ireland for only three years. Had Ireland and its relations with England and Scotland been 'in the mainstream of Scottish policy, not regarded as a temporary diversion of it'," the Scots would surely have given Ireland closer and more continuous attention than appears to have been the case. This is not to say that King Robert did not take Ireland seriously. Geography alone would have guaranteed that the Irish situation could never be of temporary interest to Scotland. Bruce never forgot Scotland's Irish frontier. There was even a belief in Scotland (unsupported by any known evidence) that if only Edward Bruce had postponed the encounter with John Bermingham at Faughart (14 October 1318) 'till the morrow', his brother would have come to his aid with a large army. Improbable as this may seem, Bruce could not afford to let English power become firmly established in Antrim or Down. In the very last years of his life, although suffering from a crippling malady, he crossed to Ulster twice, first in 1327 to make sure that Edward III got no help from Ireland, and second, in the summer Of 1328, for an unknown purpose. There is absolutely no question that Scottish policy throughout Robert I's reign embraced the exercise of a decisive influence upon the situation in northern Ireland. But when it came to the notion of a 'Celtic empire' in the west, fulfilling in part the popular prophecies of Merlin, the Scots seem to have been opportunistic. It would be wrong to sentimentalize the relations of the two peoples. They made use of each other when it suited them, and since under Robert I the Scots were better organized, the advantage, as long as he lived, lay with them.

 

To the modern Scottish mind, largely Protestant or postProtestant, there is one element in Robert Bruce's nature which has seemed unfamiliar and unattractive and has consequently been omitted from standard and popular works, or played down. This is the king's piety and devoutness, especially his devotion to certain saints of the church. Perhaps he was in no way exceptional in this respect among the kings of his time. But one is left with a strong impression that religious feeling at this level had a much more dominant place in his life than in that of Edward II, even if it meant less to him than it had done to Henry III. Certainly no picture of the king would be complete if it did not take this into account. Bruce seems, for example, to have felt a special devotion towards Saint Fillan, one of the most renowned of the Scoto-lrish saints. He granted Fillan's chief church and sanctuary (Killin and Strathfillan) to Inchaffray Abbey, evidently with the intention that a daughter-house of Inchaffray should be founded at Strathfillan, and this daughter-house he endowed with land in Glendochart.

 

The story goes that he venerated Saint Fillan's arm bone on the eve of Bannockborn and invoked the saint's help; and in the year of his death his natural son, Robert Bruce of Liddesdale, made a gift of £20 towards the fabric of Saint Fillan's church. Robert 1 is the first king known to have invoked Saint Andrew publicly as the nation's patron, and in thanks for his great victory he granted the cathedral priory of St Andrews an annual endowment of a hundred merks, afterwards exchanged for the patronage of the church of Fordoun in Kincardineshire. Saint Cuthbert attracted his love and reverence, just as he had inspired the devotion of the twelfth-century kings of Scots. Saint Thomas the Martyr of Canterbury, in whose honour William the Lion had founded the splendid abbey of Arbroath, was invoked along with Saint Andrew, Saint John Baptist and the saints of Scotland (doubtless including Columba) at the outset of the battle of Bannockburn. It must be remembered that the chancellor Bernard, who tells us this, was abbot of Arbroath and would watch over Saint Thomas's interests with special care. But there is little doubt of King Robert's reverence for the martyr, for he granted very numerous charters to his abbey and, only a few days before he died, wrote on its behalf to Edward III to ask for the restoration of Haltwhistle parish church in Northumberland, given to Arbroath 15o years earlier. He did not forget Saint Malachy, whose wrath his grandfather had tried to placate in 1272. In the Cistercian abbey of Coupar-Angus - the daughter of Melrose, the daughter of Rievaulx, the daughter of Clairvaux, where Malachy had died - the king provided for a candle and a lamp to burn perpetually at the altar of the Blessed Malachy.

 

The king's observance of his religious duties was occasionally linked to his strong sense of fitness and justice. In 13o6 Earl William of Ross had evidently seized Earl John of Atholl in the sanctuary of Saint Duthac at Tain, where he had taken refuge with the royal ladies after their flight from Kildrummy. Since Ross had handed Atholl over for execution, one condition of his being received into King Robert's peace was that he should maintain at his own expense six chaplains to say masses for Earl John at St Duthac's church. The king's brother-in-law Sir Christopher Seton, perhaps the man he loved best of all among his friends, was hanged at Dumfries after his capture at Loch Doon. When his widow, the Lady Christian Bruce, founded a chapel of the Holy Rood at Dumfries in memory of Sir Christopher, the king arranged that £5 towards its upkeep should be paid by the barony of Caerlaverock, temporarily forfeited by Sir Eustace Maxwell, who was an adherent of the English.

 

Sir Neil Bruce, hanged in 1306 like Atholl and Seton, had been taken in Kildrummy. By a charter granted in 1328, the master and brethren of the hospital of Turriff, a house formerly under the patronage of the king's enemy, the earl of Buchan, were required to find a chaplain to celebrate masses for Neil Bruce's soul.

 

The clearest evidence of Bruce's religious devotion is provided by the long-drawn-out and surely painful pilgrimage which he undertook in the last few months of his life to the shrine of Saint Ninian at Whithorn in Galloway." He was at Girvan in southern Carrick on 6 February 1329. From there he was borne slowly southward to Inchmichael (the present Lochinch), where he stayed for over a month, and so by way of Glenluce and Monreith to Whithorn, reached by 1 April. Some four days at least were spent at Whithorn, seeking the intercession of Saint Ninian - who in Bruce's time was perhaps just approaching the height of his popularity among the Scots - before the royal party returned, with rather better speed than on their outward journey, to the king's house at Cardross.

 

About three years before his death, King Robert, who had caused every royal castle in Scotland to be destroyed save Berwick, Tarbert and Dumbarton, began to build a house for himself where he could find some comfort and relaxation.

 

He chose for the site of this house the village of Cardross, on the north shore of the Firth of Clyde and on the right bank of the River Leven, immediately opposite the burgh of Dumbarton. In some ways it was a remarkable choice. The Crown had virtually no demesne land in the Lennox, and the king had to go out of his way to acquire the necessary ground at Cardross by compensating the two existing landowners. The Earl of Lennox, from whom he bought about two hundred and eight acres, received instead the lands of Leckie near Stirling. Sir David Graham, who seems to have owned the bulk of the Cardross property, was given Old Montrose in Angus, an exchange which gave rise to the historic association between the names of Graham and Montrose.

 

The king's house at Cardross has long since vanished, and only archaeological investigation could now reveal its size and character. It was not a 'castle', as it is sometimes called locally, but a manerium,which in Scotland meant a dwelling-house. There is no evidence of fortification of any kind, although a stone wall was built beside the king's chamber. The house was planned on a reasonably generous scale, with a hall, queen's chamber, chapel, kitchen and larder. The roofs were thatched. In 1328 there was an apartment called the 'new chamber' (perhaps the same as the 'king's chamber') which evidently had plastered and painted walls and glazed windows. Beside this new chamber was constructed the 'new gate'. Apart from the house itself there was a garden, for which we read of seeds being bought, and a park for the king's hunting, under the charge of Gillis the hunter and various parkers, William, Gilchrist and Gilfillan. A special building, surrounded by a hedge, housed the royal falcons. Material for the manor house was in fact brought considerable distances. A hundred 'large boards' for repairs to Cardross park were shipped from Tarbert on Loch Fyne in 1326, and two years later 4oo boards were brought as far as Lamlash in Arran, presumably en route for Cardross. The large quantities of provisions bought by the constable of Cardross, Adam, Alan's son, show that the king lived and entertained comfortably and hospitably, though not lavishly. A fishing coble in the Leven, which was attached to the estate, may have helped here. In addition to hunting and falconry, Bruce seems to have taken an interest in sailing and boat-building. He kept ships at Cardross (as did his nephew Thomas Randolph) and we read of eighty stones of iron being bought for their repair In 1328. The king had more than one ship, but we read most of his 'great ship', and of at least one occasion when it sailed to Tarbert and back. At one time this ship was drawn up out of the water into the burn beside the house, and its tackle and equipment were carted and carried 'into the manor house', presumably into its precincts or outbuildings.

 

The site of this house is now unknown. A belief once held locally and perhaps not yet extinct is that it stood on Castlehill, about half a mile west of the River Leven. It is here that it has been thought fit to commemorate publicly Bruce's close connection with this part of Cardross parish, now within the district of Dumbarton. Public commemoration is only right, and perhaps it does not matter greatly what site is chosen for it. It must be pointed out that the belief that Bruce died at Castlehill rests not just upon insufficient, but upon positively invalid evidence. This consists chiefly of two erroneous assumptions, first, that the royal residence must have been a 'castle' because no king would live in anything else, second, that the old name Castlehill obviously marks the site. In fact, the mound at Castlehill, which requires investigation, could not possibly be the site of King Robert's manerium. The contemporary evidence, whose implications were stated many years ago by David Murray, points to a site closer to the River Leven. There is still beside the river, halfway between Dumbarton Bridge and Dalchurn, and now a little way south of the new line of the A82 trunk road, the farm of Mains of Cardross. By analogy, the'mains' (='demesne', dominium) of Cardross would be at or close to the lord's dwelling. We recall that the king's great ship was drawn up out of the river (ab aqua) in a burn beside the house. Not only does this prove that the house cannot have been far from the river, but the only burn of any consequence between the mouth of the River Leven and Dalchurn is that which rises above Dalmoak and enters the river just north of Mains of Cardross. In 1362 the lands of Pelanysflat' - the last element denotes level arable or meadow - lay between Dalchurn and the king's park of Cardross. An undated eighteenth-century map by Thomas Kitchin shows Pilinflait' south of Dalchurn and slightly north-cast of Dalmoak, suggesting that it was situated just to the north of Mains of Cardross. Between Mains of Cardross and Dumbarton Bridge the ground has been much disturbed, partly by changes in the line of the River Leven, partly by industrial and road building. But it seems certain that the exact position of the house in which Bruce died is to be sought either at Mains of Cardross or somewhere in the half mile which separates the farm from the modern railway bridge over the Leven.

 

The king's choice of Cardross as the home of his last years raises a larger question, which has been postponed from an earlier stage of this study. Whether or not Bruce was bred in the Gaelic tradition, he certainly chose to die in a strongly Gaelic district. As far as Bruce himself is concerned, his decision to make a home for himself at Cardross certainly seems evidence of his love of the west, of his belief - against the current of fourteenth-century Scottish history - in the importance of the western approaches, the gateway to Ireland, the sea lanes which formed the only adequate communication with the powerful and potentially dangerous lords of Islay, Lorn and Garmoran.

 

There is surely a clue here to one abiding quality in Robert Bruce. Historians have found it hard to place the patriot king in a firm and believable context before 13o6, or even before 1314. An Anglo-Norman unsympathetic towards a conservatively kin-based Celtic-speaking society; a nobleman who cannot have possessed the common touch enjoyed by Wallace; a trained knight who could feel only distaste for guerrilla warfare - how could such a man have undergone the drastic metamorphosis required to make him a national hero? But in his own time Bruce was unlikely to have been forced into any of these categories. Born to Marjorie of Carrick, grandson of Neil (Niall), son of Nicholas, son of Duncan, son of Gilbert, son of Fergus, 'king of the Gallovidians', Bruce became earl of Carrick at eighteen and took care to associate the earldom with his family until his death in 1329. As far as we can tell neither Annandale nor the English Honour of Huntingdon meant much to him. The Firth of Clyde, however, and the Scottish islands and Ireland seem to have rated highly. Bruce took care to provide a presumably friendly abbot of Iona after 1313. Bruce was no Anglo-Norman fish out of water, grassed on a Celtic river bank. If we think of his masterly exploitation of the Clyde coast and islands in 1306 and 1307, of his astonishing march in October 1307 to overwhelm Inverlochy and Castle Urquhart, of his surprise attack on the Macdougalls in the Pass of Brander in 13o8, of his brilliant recovery of the Isle of Man with a great fleet of galleys, of his welcome at the hands of the lady of Garmoran, Christian MacRuarie, of his choice of Tarbert as the seat of a completely new royal sheriffdom, then we see in Bruce a potentate in the immemorial mould of the western Gaidhealtachd, inured since youth to a rough country and to rough warfare by land and sea. That was assuredly one aspect of Robert Bruce, even if it does not tell the whole story.

 

If this book has attempted anything, it has been to demonstrate that the most stubborn, persistent, tenacious resistance to foreign domination came from the old Scottish kingdom of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, fed by a tradition of deep-rooted loyalty to the Crown and by a sense of political nationhood expressed in the term 'community of the realm', which was employed over and over again in a great variety of contexts, yet almost always with the same meaning. This does not seem to have been a monopoly of any distinctive element in Scotland, whether regional, cultural or racial. In truth, thirteenth-century Scotland formed a society too complex to allow us to project into it sharp divisions of race and culture possibly appropriate to the country a thousand years earlier. For historical reasons largely unconnected with racial factors the essential 'heartland' of the feudal kingdom of Scotland, as it was built up by the kings of Scots from the first to the third Alexander, stretched on the cast from Dornoch to Berwick and Roxburgh, on the west from the Great Glen to Ayr. It is instructive to apply this fact to the events of 1286-1329. The least consistent support for the community of the Scottish realm during this period, and the most consistent support for the English kings, came from certain areas outwith this heartland: Caithness Islay, Lorn, Galloway and the Isle of Man. The heartland itself showed more consistent support for the community and less for English rule. Yet even if this rough and ready conclusion is acceptable, there were notable exceptions to warn us of the danger of giving too much weight to any broad generalization. The clash between Macdougall and Macdonald, for example, was strictly irrelevant to the Scots' long struggle for freedom, yet it proved of immense importance to Robert Bruce. The division of ancient Galloway into two parts was another irrelevance, but in the end it too played a vital part in Bruce ' s success. The prolonged and effective English occupation of most of Lothian and part of Teviotdale makes difficult any direct comparison between this region and the rest of Scotland. The biggest single weakness suffered by the community of the realm was not any racial or linguistic animosity but the dilemma of a disputed succession from which the war itself had arisen. Even Robert 1 did not solve this problem of schism, as was to be made painfully clear a few years after his death, when many Scots who had been identified with the national movement did homage to Edward Balliol as king, and later, after the catastrophe of Halidon Hill, an even greater number submitted to Edward III. Although many of these men had been traditionally members of the old 'Balliol' or 'Comyn' party, this was by no means true of all.

 

Robert Bruce died at his house in Cardross on 7 June 1329, at the age of fifty-five. For at least two years he had been suffering from a serious illness. The existing evidence used to be thought insufficient to enable medical experts to determine its character with certainty. In two independent English accounts, the Lanercost Chronicle and Sir Thomas Grey's Scalacronica, which are generally well informed and which may without hesitation be trusted to give at least the

popular belief, the king is said to have contracted leprosy and died of it. In another independent account, Jean le Bel says that in 1327 the king was a victim of 'la grosse maladie', which is usually taken to mean leprosy. The disease Bruce was known to have contracted is mentioned in an original letter written by an eyewitness in Ulster at the time the king made the truce with Sir Henry Mandeville on 12 July 1327. The writer of this letter reported that the Scottish king was so feeble and struck down by illness that he would not live till the following August, 'for he can scarcely move anything but his tongue'. Yet Bruce recovered sufficiently to play a not inactive part in the northern English campaign of the late summer. He was present, though evidently confined to bed, at the Edinburgh parliament of March 1328, and was even able to cross once more to Ulster in August.` He was obviously ailing gravely when he made his pilgrimage to Whithorn in the following year, yet the significant fact from the point of view of the seriousness of his illness is that he was able to go through with it. The Scottish historians do not speak of leprosy, but this could be explained by a natural reluctance on their part to attribute to a hero-king a disease regarded with superstitious dread and loathing. On the other hand, Barbour writes of the king's illness without trying to minimize its seriousness, and his explanation is that 'it began through a benumbing [of the king's body] brought on by his cold lying'during the months of wandering from 13o6 to 1309. There is no clear evidence of segregation, but it may be accepted that the king suffered from leprosy.

 

He had always wished to take part in a crusade, to fight the 'Saracens' in the Holy Land or elsewhere. On his deathbed he asked that his heart should be taken from his body, embalmed, and carried to the Holy Sepulchre by a warrior able to do battle with the enemies of God. The honour was given, either by the king himself or by the nobles who were with the king when he died, to the faithful Douglas. The king's body, with the heart removed, was borne to Dunfermline, where most of the Scottish rulers since King Edgar had been buried. It was laid beneath the middle of the choir in the abbey church, and over it was placed a 'fair tomb' which the king had ordered to be made in Paris. Douglas, with many Scottish knights, sailed from Montrose to Flanders early in 1330, and from there to Spain, armed with letters of protection from Edward III and a letter of commendation from the same king to King Alfonso XI of Castile and Leon. King Alfonso, based in Seville, was conducting a campaign against the Moors of Granada, who were strongly reinforced by contingents from Morocco. Sir James Douglas was given the command of a division of the Christian army - perhaps, as Barbour says, consisting of all the knights from England, Scotland and other foreign lands. Bearing Bruce's heart, Douglas went into battle at Tebas de Ardales on 25 August 1330. Deceived by the Moorish tactics of making a feint attack, the Scots found themselves cut off from the main body and helpless against a superior force of Moorish cavalry. Douglas himself, Sir William Sinclair, and Robert and Walter Logan were among the slain. The heart of Robert Bruce and the bones of the Good Sir James were brought back to Scotland by Sir William Keith of Galston, the former to be buried at Melrose Abbey, the latter in the parish kirk of Douglas, where in after years Sir James' natural son, Archibald the Grim, erected a noble alabaster tomb.

 

In accordance with the terms of the tailzie Of 1326, Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray, assumed the office of Guardian of Scotland. As lord of Badenoch the earl was patron of the kirk of Saint Drostan of Alvie, whose large mountainous parish stretches north and south from Loch Alvie, half a mile north of the River Spey. On 18 October 1331 Earl Thomas, acting in collaboration with John of Pilinuir, Bishop of Moray, granted to the perpetual chaplains serving the chapelries founded in Elgin Cathedral by the earl and others the patronage of this small highland kirk. The surplus income from this kirk, together with the revenues of the bishop's kirks of Altyre and Birnie, was assigned by Bishop Pilmuir to the chaplains to augment their stipends, on condition that each chaplain should celebrate a requiem mass once a week for the health during his life and soul's weal after death of Earl Thomas, and 'for the soul of the most noble prince, the lord Robert, of good memory, king of Scotland'. Daily throughout the year they were to make a special commemoration for the soul of King Robert (and likewise for those of Earl Thomas and the bishop and his parents) in their prayers and masses. The whole arrangement was set forth in and confirmed by letters of grace issued at Avignon by Pope Clement VI on 12 June in the jubilee year Of 1350.