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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Robert the Bruce
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(Robert I, 1274–1329)
King of Scotland from 1306. He was a member of the Norman family of Bruce, of which every eldest son was called Robert de Bruce. Through marriage to the royal family the Bruces had a claim to the throne after the death in 1290 of *Margaret, the Maid of Norway. The crown went instead to John de *Balliol, whose subsequent removal by the English king *Edward I left a hiatus in the royal house of Scotland. This ended in 1306, when Robert de Bruce murdered a rival claimant, John Comyn, in a church in Dumfries and had himself crowned at *Scone.
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A succession of defeats by English armies led to three of Robert's brothers being executed and to his own flight, late in 1306, to the island of Rathlin off the northern Irish coast; his supposed place of refuge is *Bruce's Cave. The story of the lesson taught him by the persistent spider (failing six times to attach its web, just as he had failed six times against the English, and then succeeding on the seventh attempt) was first published in 1828 by Walter Scott, who claimed it to be a tradition within the Bruce family.
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Like the spider, Robert did succeed when he persevered. From 1307 his supporters steadily recovered the Scottish castles which had fallen into English hands, and at *Bannockburn in 1314 he inflicted a decisive defeat on the English king – by now *Edward II, a less formidable adversary than his father. In the following years Robert made continuous raids into the north of England. Finally, in 1328, the English recognized him as king of Scotland and renounced any claims to overlordship. He had only daughters (by his first wife, Isabella of Mar, and his second, Elizabeth de Burgh) until the birth in his final years of his successor, *David II (see the *royal house of Scotland).
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