Robert III of Scotland

“ King Robert returned to Scotland in May 1317, after an absence of about half a year, bringing with him 'many wounded men.' Meantime his lieutenants had kept Scotland with a strong hand. During 1316, Edward's efforts to conduct an army against the Scots had been again and again thwarted, and towards the end of November negotiations were in progress for a truce. ”

“ But ill success must be accounted even more horrible, for it robs merit of the support it ought to have. King Robert now began to reap the reward that success ensures to any cause apart from its merit. Still, it is difficult to believe that King Edward, had he lived, would have been baffled in reducing Scotland to subjection, backed as he was by many of her most powerful barons, such as the Earls of March, Fife, and Buchan, and by the chieftains of the old native race, such as the Macdoualls of Galloway and of Lorn. ”

“ King Robert was left to fight his Scottish enemies without their English allies. These Scottish enemies may be divided into two classes—the Anglo-Norman nobles who had supported the English cause more or less consistently, and the personal enemies of the Bruce, who increased in numbers after the murder of Comyn. Among the great families thus alienated from the cause of Scotland were the Highlanders of Argyll and the Isles, some of the men of Badenach, and certain Galloway clans. ”

“ Of little heed to Edward were the resistance of all Scotland, were Robert in his power. Honor, station, wealth!—oh, knowest thou the human heart so little as to believe these can exist with black treachery and fell remorse? Once and forever, I tell thee thine offers are in vain. Were death in one scale, and free, unshackled liberty in the other, and thou badest me choose between, I would not so stain my soul. Death, death itself were welcome, aye, worse than death—confinement, chains. I would hug them to my heart as precious boons, rather than live and walk the earth a traitor. ”

“ Devotion to her destined savior argues well for bonny Scotland; better do homage unto thee as liege and king, though usurpation hath abridged thy kingdom, than to the hireling of England's Edward, all Scotland at his feet. Men will not kneel to sceptred slaves, nor freemen fight for tyrants' tools. Sovereign of Scotland thou art, thou shalt be, Robert the Bruce! Too long hast thou kept back; but now, if arms can fight and hearts can pray, thou shalt be king of Scotland. ”

“ He made advances towards friendship with France, but it soon became plain that that kingdom was inclined to support the cause of the late King, whose young widow, Isabella, was the daughter of Charles VI. The title of King of England was refused to Henry, Isabella and her dowry demanded, and hostility thus kept continually alive. In Scotland, also, the same feeling showed itself. The King, Robert III., was confined by weakness of body and mind almost exclusively to the Isle of Bute; his brother, the Duke of Albany, was the real ruler of the country. ”

“ THE service which King Robert had laid upon the Lord of Douglas, was one which not only removed from the defence of Scotland her most experienced soldier and perhaps the coolest head in her council, but also exposed him to mortal peril. ”

“ His deep love for the Bruce was fully returned, and King Robert gave passing expression to it in a charter of lands granted to the bishopric during Wishart's captivity, dated April 26, 1309.
"We feel in the depth of our heart the imprisonment and chains, the persecution and duress, which the venerable father, Lord Robert, by the grace of God Bishop of Glasgow, has hitherto endured and still patiently endures, for the rights of the Church and our kingdom of Scotland." ”

“ And wherever you come, let it be known that you carry with you the heart of King Robert of Scotland, at his own instance and desire, to be presented at the holy sepulchre.'"
Sir James at once pledged himself to the task, by the faith he owed to God and to the order of true knighthood. "Then I thank you," said the King, "for now I shall die in greater ease of mind, seeing I know that the most worthy and sufficient knight in my realm shall achieve for me that which I could not myself perform." ”

“ On April 26, 1315, a Parliament was held in the Parish Church of Ayr, to consider 'the condition, defence, and perpetual security of the Kingdom of Scotland.' The business was to settle the succession to the throne. It was enacted that, failing lawful male heirs of King Robert, Sir Edward and his lawful male heirs should succeed; failing these, Marjory; and failing Marjory, the nearest lineal heir of the body of Robert. In case the heir were a minor, Randolph was to be guardian of both heir and realm. ”

“ Yet they were not to be held subject to the vicissitudes of war, but were to receive back their lands on the restoration of peace, an advantage refused to legitimate men of the sword. Then the uneasiness of King Robert and his people, owing to the repeated exercise against him of bell, book and candle, is apparent in the third article of this treaty. It is true that the solemn curses of the Church had proved singularly ineffective as regards the temporal affairs of Scotland. The louder and deeper the execrations, the more brightly fortune had smiled on the Scottish arms ”

“ If Robert the Bruce were ambitious, the passion in him assumed a nobler and better form; yet we can scarcely call that ambition which sought but the delivery of Scotland from chains, but the regaining an ancient heritage, and sought no more. It was patriotism hallowed by suffering, purified by adversity; patriotism the noblest, purest which ever entered the heart of man.
King Robert and his handful of followers not only reached their trysting-place themselves, but were joined by the queen, and many of her female companions and their attendant warriors, ere Lord James of Douglas returned ”

“ About that time he seems to have retired to his Scottish barony, and in 1244 concurred in sending the king of Scotland's treaty of peace with Henry III to Innocent IV for confirmation. In 1252, on the marriage of Henry III's daughter Margaret to Alexander III of Scotland, the king of England appointed Robert, who seems at the time to have held the office of marshal of his household, one of the guardians of the young queen (Matt. Paris, Hist. Maj. v. 272) . ”

“ At this time he changed his baptismal name of John, which was unpopular owing to its connexion with John de Baliol, for that of Robert, being crowned at Scone' in August 1390 as King Robert III. Although he probably attended several parliaments the new king was only the nominal ruler of Scotland, the real power being in the hands of his brother, the earl of Fife. ”

“ Even had there been found a Scotsman so alien from the spirit of his race as to hold the memory of Robert the Bruce as a common thing, unworthy of honour, surely there were noble ashes enough besides in that abbey ground to make it forever sacred. For, so soon as the different peoples inhabiting Scotland had united to form one nation under one monarch, Dunfermline succeeded Iona as the sepulchre of the Scottish kings. Here were laid Malcolm Canmore, his Queen Margaret, and their sons Edward, Edmund, and Ethelbert ”

“ ELIZABETH, the consort and second wife of King Robert of Scotland, did not live to witness the fulfilment of her husband's life-work, for she died on October 26, 1327. Of her character and appearance no memorial has been preserved. She was the second daughter of Richard de Burgh or Bourke, Earl of Ulster, the most powerful of the English barons in Ireland, and married Robert de Brus while he was still about the English court. ”

“ It was Robert, the son of Isabel, who competed with Baliol for the throne of Scotland.
Robert Bruce, who stands forth as the greatest character in Scottish history, was twelve years old when his grandfather was defeated by Baliol in this competition. No family in the vassal kingdom was more trusted by England's King, nor more friendly to his pretensions. The young Robert's father had accompanied King Edward to Palestine in his own youth, and he himself was being trained at the English Court. ”

“ The nation of Scotland was also raised once more from the situation of a distressed and conquered province to that of a free and independent state, governed by its own laws, and subject to its own princes; and although the country was after the Bruce's death often subjected to great loss and distress, both by the hostility of the English, and by the unhappy civil wars among the Scots themselves, yet they never afterward lost the freedom for which Wallace had laid down his life, and which King Robert had recovered, not less by his wisdom than by his weapons. ”

“ But the Earl of Carlisle, as doughty a warrior as the best, saw that the contest was both hopeless and ruinous; and on January 3, 1322–23, he was closeted with Randolph at Lochmaben.140 There and then they drafted an agreement. The fundamental provisions were: (1) that each realm should have its own national King; (2) that the Earl should aid King Robert in maintaining Scotland against all gainsayers; and (3) that King Robert and the Earl should maintain the realm of England under the direction of a council of twelve, six to be chosen by each party. ”

“ The chief object of the Earl of Moray's second voyage to Scotland was to convey an earnest entreaty from the new King of Ireland for the personal assistance of the King of Scots, with Edward de Brus's assurance that they would prove irresistible if united in the field. King Robert, therefore, leaving his realm under the guardianship of Douglas and Walter the Steward, sailed from Loch Ryan early in the autumn of 1316, and joined Edward at Carrickfergus. ”

“ Of his capacity as a military commander the best evidence is found in the uniform success which he achieved in many years of warfare, generally against greatly superior numbers while his wisdom as a ruler perhaps may best be realized by comparing the state of affairs in Scotland under his government with that which prevailed under another nephew of King Robert who succeeded Moray in the Regency—Donald, Earl of Mar. ”

“ Our earnest desires are for reconciliation and peace, and you well know that our bull, issued for attaining these objects, will never be received in Scotland, if we address it to Robert de Brus under any other appellation but that of King. We therefore exhort your royal wisdom that you will prudently tolerate that we write to the said Robert under the royal title. We hear that reproaches have reached you, as if the Earl of Moray had made other proposals, prejudicial to you and your kingdom. ”

“ The Scottish Parliament met again at Scone in August 1320, for the despatch of business of a very pressing and painful kind. King Edward's agents had succeeded in sapping the loyalty of some of King Robert's trusted barons, and a serious conspiracy had been discovered, having, as is supposed, the object of setting William de Soulis on the throne of Scotland, probably on condition of his acknowledging the suzerainty of the King of England. ”

“ The Scots not only invaded England, but adopted the policy of fighting England in Ireland, and English reprisals in Scotland were uniformly unsuccessful. Bruce invaded England in 1315; in the same year, his brother Edward landed with a Scottish army at Carrickfergus, in the hope of obtaining a throne for himself. He was crowned King of Ireland in May, 1316, and during that and the following year, King Robert was personally in Ireland, giving assistance to his brother. ”

“ Alexander III., his Queen Margaret, and their sons David and Alexander. Hither also, in the days that followed the reign of Robert the Bruce, had been carried almost all that Scotland had to cherish of wise and great and good among her rulers: surely her sons would hold the place sacred for all time. ”

“ When the independence of Scotland is really at stake, we shall find the "true Scots" on the patriotic side. Highlanders and Islesmen fought under the banner of David I at Northallerton; they took their place along with the men of Carrick in the Bruce's own division at Bannockburn, and they bore their part in the stubborn ring that encircled James IV at Flodden. At other times, indeed, we do find the Lords of the Isles involved in treacherous intrigues with the kings of England, but just in the same way as we see the Earls of Douglas engaged in traitorous schemes against the Scottish kings. ”

“ This is the real explanation of the support given to the Celtic pretenders. A new civilization is not easily imposed upon a people. Elsewhere in Scotland, the process was more gradual and less violent. In the eastern Lowlands there were no pretenders and no rebellions, and traces of the earlier civilization remained longer than in Galloway and in Moray. "In Fife alone", says Mr. Robertson, "the Earl continued in the thirteenth century to exercise the prerogatives of a royal Maor, and, in the reign of David I, we find in Fife what is practically the clan MacDuff." ”

“ There is more probability in Barbour's assertion that Sir Edward111 Bruce, 'who stouter was than a leopard, thought Scotland too small for his brother and himself.' It may be that this particular outlet for his restless and ambitious spirit was opened up by an offer of the crown of Ireland by independent Ulster kinglets either in the first place to King Robert or directly to Sir Edward himself. ”

“ In 1399, Rothesay had just succeeded his uncle as regent, and to him, as to Henry IV, there was a strong temptation to acquire popularity by a spirited foreign policy. The Scots hesitated to acknowledge Henry as King of England, and he, in turn, seems to have resolved upon an invasion of Scotland as the first military event of his reign. He, accordingly, raised the old claim of homage, and marched into Scotland to demand the fealty of Robert III and his barons. As usual, we find in Scotland some malcontents, who form an English party. ”