If everything you know about the Scottish fight for independence comes from "Braveheart," then
you only know part of the story. Keep watching for the full story of Scotland's "Outlaw king."
Robert the Bruce was born in 1274 at Turnberry Castle, which is located on Scotland's west coast.
Robert was a distant relative of Scotland's royal family,
and was granted the earldom of Carrick by his father in 1292. What's more, young Robert was
one in a growing line of Bruces who were moving ever closer to the Scottish throne,
bolstered by their noble heritage and the lands they held in both Scotland and England.
Robert spent much of his early life in London, and would likely have lived for a time in eastern
Ireland or the Western Isles of Scotland. His worldliness was perhaps best demonstrated by
his knowledge of language. While it stands to reason that he could speak Scots and Gaelic,
his time in London would have given him a working knowledge of French too, which was the language
of the court during the Anglo-Norman era. Robert is also said to have enjoyed
translating French literature, which suggests that he was pretty well educated for the time.
Things began moving into place for the young Robert in 1286.
That's when Alexander III of Scotland died, setting off a huge succession crisis in Scotland.
Alexander had been traveling south to meet his new wife, the French countess Yolande de Dreux.
At some point, both nightfall and poor weather separated the king from his group.
He was found dead the next morning, having apparently fallen off his horse.
Alexander had named his granddaughter, Margaret,
his successor, but the seven-year-old girl died only four years later. This left the
throne of Scotland wide open — and the country in upheaval over who, exactly, should occupy it.
Ultimately, two contenders emerged out of a group of thirteen: Robert the Bruce's
grandfather and John Balliol, lord of Galloway. Balliol was crowned king in 1292, but the move
wasn't without controversy, and the English king, Edward I, constantly undermined Balliol's rule.
He reigned for just three years before a council of twelve guardians took over
governance of Scotland; they subsequently asked King Edward to mediate the crisis.
Edward saw this as an opportunity, however, and invaded Scotland in 1296.
Scotland's neighbor to the south had seemingly had designs on the kingdom for years. In reality,
John Balliol was little more than a puppet king who was effectively chosen by Edward I of England.
Edward essentially believed that Scotland was more of a sub-kingdom of his than an
independent nation. Ostensibly, Balliol won the contest to be king because he
was a closer relation to the royal line than the Bruces, but it's also probable
that Edward simply saw him as a far more manageable subject than his competitors.
Eventually, the Council of Guardians that had deposed Balliol attempted to side Scotland with
France and form what was later became known as the "Auld Alliance." For whatever power he still had
at that point, Balliol sided with the Guardians in 1296 and denied Edward his sub-kingdom.
Surprisingly enough, the complicated and ever-shifting web of alliances
meant that Robert the Bruce and the rest of his family actually sided with the English.
Eventually, Balliol was forced off the throne and into the Tower of London — though the pope
later stepped in, and John was allowed to depart for the French region of Normandy.
With Balliol out of the way, Edward I began his invasion in earnest.
His response to the alliance between Scotland and France was to wreak havoc across Scotland.
But the Scottish weren't about to let things go so easily. During this time,
Robert Bruce took part in a number of rebellions against Edward and the English,
including the infamous rising led by William Wallace. Wallace had emerged
on the scene in 1297 after launching an attack on the Scottish town of Lanark
and subsequently killing the settlement's English sheriff. He then became something of a lightning
rod for Scottish resistance, attracting countless supporters and eventually leading a full-blown
rebellion against the occupying English forces. You probably know this part of the story.
"They may take our lives, but they'll never take our freedom!"
The greatest achievement of Wallace's campaign was arguably the Battle of Stirling Bridge,
which began to loosen the English grip on Scotland. By then, Robert the Bruce was one
of Wallace's leading supporters, though he also took the decision to open negotiations
with Edward while Wallace was overseas. As other Scottish leaders began to sit down with
the English, Wallace was left out in the cold. Eventually, Edward I put a price on his head,
and in August 1305, Wallace was captured, transported to London, and executed.
With Balliol gone and William Wallace dead, by the early 1300s it may have seemed like
there was little between the Bruces and the throne. But there was still John Comyn.
Comyn came from a noble Scottish family not unlike that of Robert's. Not only was his father one of
the earlier contenders for the throne, but his mother was Eleanor Balliol, the sister of the
deposed John Balliol. Comyn himself became a Guardian of Scotland after William Wallace
resigned the post, which was a hugely significant political position to hold at the time.
All of this meant that Comyn and Robert were well established as political rivals. On February 10th,
1306, the two men met at Dumfries priory. Though the meeting was supposed to be some
kind of reconciliation between them, things deteriorated dramatically and Robert struck Comyn.
Robert retreated but, upon learning that Comyn had been wounded,
some of the Bruce's supporters came back and killed Comyn in the church.
English sources claimed the killing of John Comyn constituted
"outrageous sacrilege," while another commentator called Bruce a "tyrant."
And the political consequences were cataclysmic, leading to Robert's ascension to the throne,
a deeply sullied reputation, and a swift excommunication courtesy of Pope Clement V.
In the aftermath of Comyn's murder, Robert the Bruce took on a more aggressive stance against
the English; he even threatened to "defend himself with the longest stick that he had"
if Edward wouldn't back off. Between that display of force and Comyn's bloody end, Robert was in a
good position to make himself king. He was crowned on March 25th, 1306, though Edward had already
made away with Scotland's coronation artifacts, such as the Stone of Destiny. Don't worry,
though — a bunch of Scottish students managed to briefly steal that one back in the 1950s.
"To bring it back was a very, very symbolic gesture."
Unsurprisingly, things continued to be pretty rough not just for Robert,
but for quite a few other members of his family. The early years of his reign were
fraught with military defeats, to the point that he was nicknamed "King Hob" — essentially "King
Nobody." At certain points, Robert was even forced to go on the run.
Then again, you might still have preferred to be Robert himself, considering what happened
to some of his siblings. No fewer than three of Robert's brothers were killed by the English,
while his 12-year-old daughter was captured and sent to a convent. His sister Mary, meanwhile, was
held in an exposed cage at Roxburgh Castle, though she was later released in a prisoner exchange.
By 1314, a series of fortunate events had begun to turn things around for Robert.
For one, Edward I had died in 1307, leaving his rather less fearsome son,
Edward II ["the second"], to continue the war against Scotland. As a result, English control
in Scotland began to slip. The situation for the English eventually became so dire that, in 1314,
only one English stronghold remained in all of Scotland: Stirling Castle.
Robert the Bruce's forces besieged the castle that summer, but Edward II sent some 13,000 soldiers
to lift the siege, accompanied by even greater numbers of archers and horse-mounted cavalry.
Although King Robert's 7,000 warriors were hugely outnumbered, the Scottish made smart use of the
landscape — most notably digging anti-cavalry ditches around Stirling Castle itself. It's even
said that Robert himself waded into the battle, personally killing a knight with a battle axe.
All told, the English suffered considerable losses, numbering in the thousands.
The victory at Bannockburn shored up the kingdom and finally made it seem as if
Scotland really could stand on its own. What's more, the battle legitimized Robert the Bruce
as a righteous and powerful king — at least in the eyes of later historians and poets.
Whether or not the victory at Bannockburn fully redeemed Robert the Bruce's reputation,
it certainly seemed to have given him a renewed sense of determination.
In the years after the battle, Robert sent his family members
across the sea to take Irish lands and establish Scottish outposts in the west.
His brother Edward was even crowned king of Ireland in 1316, supported in part by locals
who weren't especially happy at their dealings with previous English overlords. Then again,
this wasn't an especially successful move, given that Edward was killed on the battlefield
just two years later. The Bruce family's designs on Ireland seem to have ended there.
More enduring, perhaps, was the 1320 letter Robert Bruce sent to the pope petitioning for his
excommunication to be rescinded — and for Robert to be officially recognized as Scotland's king.
The so-called "Declaration of Arbroath" also asserted that Scotland was its own
independent kingdom. Given the language of the declaration,
"bold" is probably the right word to describe it. It reads, in part:
"As long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under
English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honors, that we are fighting,
but for freedom – for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself."
Things became relatively more stable for Robert the Bruce in the years following
the Battle of Bannockburn and the Declaration of Arbroath,
though the pope didn't get around to recognizing Scotland's independence until eight years later.
Nevertheless, not all was well in the Scottish kingdom. There's evidence of one failed
assassination plot against Robert the Bruce, as well as a half-hearted English invasion that went
pretty much nowhere. Robert certainly seemed to be playing up to his warrior-like reputation;
many artifacts from the time depict him in a combative pose.
On his royal seal, for example, he's sitting atop a horse, clad in armor and raising a sword,
perhaps ready to fight for his legitimacy against the English.
Despite this posturing, Bruce made peace with England in 1327 after yet
another king took over the English throne. Edward III, who gained the crown after his
highly unpopular father was deposed, agreed to renounce all claims to Scotland. Inevitably,
relations between the two kingdoms were fated to sour — but at the time,
King Robert and his people must have felt an immense sense of accomplishment
and relief to know that the war was finally over. Robert himself died two years later, in 1329.
Though the retreat of the English in the 14th century marked an end to Scotland's
First War of Independence, the kingdom's sovereignty would not remain unchallenged.
For one, the ascension of James VI and I of Scotland and England to the English
throne in 1603 effectively united the two kingdoms under a single monarch,
though they were still technically counted as separate lands. Later on,
the 1707 Acts of Union legally joined Scotland and England together, establishing the United Kingdom.
But the impressive endurance of the Acts of Union doesn't mean that the Union was popular,
or that the UK was able to avoid a number of challenges and upsets over the ensuing centuries.
Even today, the prospect of Scottish independence is still a contentious subject;
one that, in 2014, was only narrowly avoided after a nationwide referendum.
"The question shook the United Kingdom to the core,
and for those who fear the breakup of the country, the referendum results tonight bring relief."
And Robert the Bruce's Declaration of Arbroath remains an important part of
Scotland's modern independence movement. Although the letter sent to the pope has since been lost,
an original copy of the document still exists,
and is today counted among the country's most important historical relics.
“Scotland’s gotta be here somewhere.”
“No, they wanted their own ship.”
“Hmm. Good for them! Nothing changes.”
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