Robert Bruce - Background and Early Life

Background and Early Life

The first of the Bruces or de Brus line arrived in Scotland with David I in 1124 and was given the lands of Annandale in Dumfries and Galloway.

Robert was the first son of Robert de Brus, 6th Lord of Annandale and Marjorie, Countess of Carrick, and claimed the Scottish throne as a fourth great-grandson of David I. His mother, Marjorie, Countess of Carrick, was by all accounts a formidable woman who, legend would have it, kept Robert Bruce's father captive until he agreed to marry her. From his mother, he inherited the Earldom of Carrick, and through his father a royal lineage that would give him a claim to the Scottish throne. The Bruces also held substantial estates in Garioch, Essex, Middlesex and County Durham.

Although Robert the Bruce's date of birth is known, his place of birth is less certain, although it is most likely to have been Turnberry Castle in Ayrshire, the head of his mother’s earldom. Very little is known of his youth. He was probably brought up in a mixture of the Anglo-Norman culture of northern England and south-eastern Scotland, and the Gaelic culture of south-west Scotland and most of Scotland north of the River Forth. Annandale was thoroughly feudalized and the form of Northern Middle English which would later develop into the Scots language was spoken throughout the region. Carrick was historically an integral part of Galloway, and though the earls of Carrick had achieved some feudalization, the society of Carrick at the end of the thirteenth century remained emphatically Celtic and Gaelic speaking.

Robert the Bruce would most probably have become trilingual at an early age. He would have spoken both the Anglo-Norman language of his Scoto-Norman peers and his father’s family, and the Gaelic language of his Carrick birthplace and his mother’s family. He would also have spoken the early Scots language. The family would have moved between the castles of their lordships - Lochmaben Castle, the main castle of the lordship of Annandale, and Turnberry and Loch Doon Castle, the castles of the earldom of Carrick. Robert had nine siblings, and he and his brother Edward may have been fostered according to Gaelic tradition, spending a substantial part of their youth at the courts of other noblemen (Robert’s foster-brother is referred to by Barbour as sharing Robert’s precarious existence as an outlaw in Carrick in 1307-08). As heir, Robert would have been schooled by tutors in all the requirements of courtly etiquette, and he would waited as a page at his father’s and grandfather’s tables. This grandfather, known to contemporaries as Robert the Noble, and to history as ‘Bruce the Competitor’ (because he competed with the other claimants to the throne of Scotland in the 'Great Cause'), seems to have been an immense influence on the future king.

Robert's first appearance in history is on a witness list of a charter issued by Alexander Og MacDonald, Lord of Islay. His name appears in the company of the Bishop of Argyll, the vicar of Arran, a Kintyre clerk, his father and a host of Gaelic notaries from Carrick. Robert Bruce, the king to be, was sixteen years of age when Margaret, Maid of Norway died in 1290, and he must have followed this and subsequent events with interest, perfectly aware that his own fate would be profoundly affected by the success or failure of his grandfather’s claim to the throne. It is also around this time that Robert would have been knighted, and he began to appear on the political stage in the Bruce dynastic interest.

Robert's mother died early in 1292. In November of the same year Edward I of England, on behalf of the Guardians of Scotland, and following the 'Great Cause', awarded the vacant Crown of Scotland to his grandfather's first cousin once removed, John Balliol, Almost immediately, his grandfather, Robert de Brus, 5th Lord of Annandale, resigned his Lordship of Annandale and his claim to the throne to Robert's father, possibly to avoid having to swear fealty to John as a vassal lord. Days later that son, Robert de Brus, 6th Lord of Annandale, resigned the earldom of Carrick he had held in right of his late wife to their son, Robert, the future king.

Even after John's accession, Edward still continued to assert his authority over Scotland and relations between the two kings soon began to deteriorate. Naturally, the Bruces sided with King Edward against King John and his Comyn allies. Robert the Bruce and his father both considered John a usurper. Against the objections of the Scots, Edward I agreed to hear appeals on cases ruled on by the court of the Guardians that had governed Scotland during the interregnum. A further provocation came in a case brought by Macduff, son of Malcolm, Earl of Fife, in which Edward demanded that John appear in person before the English Parliament to answer the charges. This the Scottish king did, but the final straw was Edward's demand that the Scottish magnates provide military service in England's war against France. This was unacceptable; the Scots instead formed an alliance with France The Comyn-dominated council acting in the name of King John summoned the Scottish host to meet at Caddonlee on 11 March. The Bruces and the earls of Angus and March refused and the Bruce family withdrew temporarily from Scotland, while the Comyns forfeited their estates in Annandale and Carrick, granting them to John Comyn, Earl of Buchan. Edward I had, however, provided a safe refuge for the Bruces, having appointed the Lord of Annandale to the command of Carlisle Castle in October 1295. At some point in early 1296, Robert married his first wife, Isabella of Mar the daughter of Domhnall I, Earl of Mar and his wife Helen.