Historiography
Abbot Walter Bower reported that Robert III described himself as "the worst of kings and the most miserable of men". Gordon Donaldson in his general history Scottish Kings (1967) agrees and writes of the first two Stewart kings "that a famous dynasty, which was to produce so many men of remarkable ability ... made a somewhat pedestrian beginning". He immediately qualifies this statement with "it is true that the sources, both record and narrative, are scanty". He goes further and explains "admittedly, no attempt has yet been made to bring the resources of modern historical research to bear on Robert II and Robert III ... but it is beyond the bounds of probability that even if this is done either of them will emerge as a man who did much positively to shape Scottish history." When Robert III re-established his personal rule in 1393 Donaldson characterises it as a period of anarchy and of a king who couldn’t control his brothers Albany and Buchan nor his son Rothesay.
Ranald Nicholson agrees with Donaldson in his Scotland: The Later Middle Ages (1974) and describes Robert III as a failure, like his father, because he wasn’t dominant. Nicholson’s opinion was that in his period as lieutenant in the 1380s, Robert (John, earl of Carrick) was incapable of dealing with the breakdown of law and order citing the number of legal cases. The lameness of Carrick after being kicked by a horse was explained by Nicholson as the excuse needed to have him replaced by his brother Robert, earl of Fife as the king’s lieutenant. Nicholson writes "nothing much was to be hoped for in the heir apparent" and goes on to blame Robert III for the destruction of Forres and Elgin despite the lieutenancy of Fife at the time.
Andrew Barrell in his book Medieval Scotland (2000) puts forward that the first two Stewart kings "had difficulty in asserting themselves, partly because their dynasty was new to kingship and needed to establish itself". Robert III’s period of personal rule from 1393 was "disastrous" according to Barrell, and was exemplified by the king’s failure to re-take the royal fortress of Dumbarton. Barrell’s final assessment of Robert III was of a man crippled in body and incapable or averse to personally confronting Albany but sought to do so through promoting the status of his sons, and even then he failed.
Alexander Grant in Independence and Nationhood (1984) found Robert III to be "probably Scotland's least impressive king". Grant puts this into perspective and writes that it is notable that Robert III's reign could have been worse compared to the turmoil and violence experienced in England and France when ruled by weak kings—even on Robert’s death, Scotland didn’t descend into open civil war but was restricted to positioning among the royal family and its magnate groupings. Grant, in The New Cambridge Medieval History, explains that the 13th century Scottish kings ruled with the endorsement of practically all of the political classes but that none of the 14th century kings, from Robert I to Robert III, did so and retained loyalty by the use of patronage. The benefits of this were outweighed by the disadvantages—alienated lands reduced crown income, endowments had the same effect, the estates granted to nobles and church often in regality led to a loss of royal attendance within these territories and contributed to a diminishment of authority.
Michael Lynch suggests that the earlier 20th century historians made hasty evaluations of both Robert II and Robert III, when they characterised them as "pathetically weak personalities" and their reigns as "nineteen years of senility and sixteen of infirmity". Lynch also makes the point that the complaints made in the later chronicles of lawlessness and disturbance in the country was mainly confined to the north with the king’s brother Alexander, lord of Badenoch and earl of Buchan at its root. The death of John, lord of the Isles heralded a state of dissension between the lordship and the crown that was to last for two generations and which even Robert III’s successor James I was unable to deal with properly. Lynch states that much of the troubles during Robert III’s reign derived from the sharp deterioration of the royal revenues. The unruliness of northern Scotland was the result of competing factions within the royal family—Lynch suggests that the weakness in kingship before 1406 "can be exaggerated" citing Buchan’s enforced appearance at Robert III’s council to answer for his incendiary attack on Elgin and its cathedral and Albany’s obtainment of a submission from the lord of the Isles.
In Stephen Boardman’s The Early Stewart Kings, the younger Robert, then John, earl of Carrick, is shown to be an energetic ambitious man and fully engaged in the running of the country, at the centre of Anglo-Scottish diplomacy, and who became the pre-eminent magnate in Scotland and whose political importance south of the Forth would eclipse that of his father’s. Boardman describes how in 1384 he callously engineered the council to remove his father from power and to place it in his hands. Many of the problems of Robert III’s rule, Boardman argues, stemmed from the death of his brother-in-law and close ally James, earl of Douglas at Otterburnn in 1388 when his deliberately constructed and powerful affinity south of the Forth crumbled. That same year Carrick lost the lieutenancy to his brother Robert earl of Fife that was, Boardman suggests, a blow to the future king’s standing and one from which he would not fully recover. According to Boardman, when Robert became king in 1390 he was the victim of his father’s style of government characterised by Robert II’s creation of his sons, sons-in-law, and other major territorial nobles as powerful magnates to whom he delegated extensive authority—as a result Robert III’s brothers refused to act simply as liegemen to the king. Robert III, already weakened by council when he ascended the throne was in the end completely subordinated to the magnatial power of Albany and Douglas.
Read more about this topic: Robert III Of Scotland