54 Facts About Robert Bruce

One of the most renowned warriors of his generation, Robert eventually led Scotland during the First War of Scottish Independence against England.

Robert Bruce fought successfully during his reign to regain Scotland's place as an independent kingdom and is revered in Scotland as a national hero.

Robert Bruce was a fourth great-grandson of King David I, and his grandfather, Robert Bruce de Brus, 5th Lord of Annandale, was one of the claimants to the Scottish throne during the "Great Cause".

Robert Bruce I defeated his other opponents, destroying their strongholds and devastating their lands, and in 1309 held his first parliament.

Robert Bruce's body is buried in Dunfermline Abbey, while his heart was interred in Melrose Abbey, and his internal organs embalmed and placed in St Serf's Church, Dumbarton.

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Robert de Brus, 1st Lord of Annandale, the first of the Bruce line, had settled in Scotland during the reign of King David I, 1124 and was granted the Lordship of Annandale in 1124.

Robert Bruce was probably brought up in a mixture of the Anglo-Norman culture of northern England and south-eastern Scotland, and the Gaelic culture of southwest Scotland and most of Scotland north of the River Forth.

Robert Bruce would have been schooled to speak, read and possibly write in the Anglo-Norman language of his Scots-Norman peers and the Scoto-Norman portion of his family.

Robert Bruce would have spoken both the Gaelic language of his Carrick birthplace and his mother's family and the early Scots language.

That Robert Bruce took personal pleasure in such learning and leisure is suggested in a number of ways.

Barbour reported that Robert Bruce read aloud to his band of supporters in 1306, reciting from memory tales from a twelfth-century romance of Charlemagne, Fierabras, as well as relating examples from history such as Hannibal's defiance of Rome.

Sir Thomas Grey asserted in his Scalacronica that in about 1292, Robert the Bruce, then aged eighteen, was a "young bachelor of King Edward's Chamber".

Robert Bruce's 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 would have gained first-hand knowledge of the city's defences.

When King Edward returned to England after his victory at the Battle of Falkirk, the Robert Bruce's possessions were excepted from the Lordships and lands that Edward assigned to his followers.

The reason for this is uncertain, though Fordun records Robert Bruce fighting for Edward, at Falkirk, under the command of Antony Bek, Bishop of Durham, Annandale and Carrick.

Robert Bruce was succeeded by Robert Bruce and John Comyn as joint Guardians, but they could not see past their personal differences.

The following year, Robert Bruce finally resigned as joint Guardian and was replaced by Sir Gilbert de Umfraville, Earl of Angus.

Soules was appointed largely because he was part of neither the Robert Bruce nor the Comyn camps and was a patriot.

Robert Bruce was an active Guardian and made renewed efforts to have King John returned to the Scottish throne.

Robert Bruce pledged that, henceforth, he would "never again" require the monks to serve unless it was to "the common army of the whole realm", for national defence.

Robert Bruce married his second wife that year, Elizabeth de Burgh, the daughter of Richard de Burgh, 2nd Earl of Ulster.

Robert Bruce's ambition was further thwarted by John Comyn, who supported John Balliol.

Robert Bruce had a powerful claim to the Scottish throne through his descent from Donald III on his father's side and David I on his mother's side.

Robert Bruce took the hint, and he and a squire fled the English court during the night.

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Robert Bruce asserted his claim to the Scottish crown and began his campaign by force for the independence of Scotland.

Bruce hurried from Dumfries to Glasgow, where his friend and supporter Bishop Robert Wishart granted him absolution and subsequently adjured the clergy throughout the land to rally to Bruce.

The royal robes and vestments that Robert Bruce Wishart had hidden from the English were brought out by the bishop and set upon King Robert Bruce.

Robert Bruce claimed the right of her family, the MacDuff Earl of Fife, to crown the Scottish king for her brother, Donnchadh IV, Earl of Fife, who was not yet of age, and in English hands.

Robert Bruce fled with a small following of his most faithful men, including Sir James Douglas and Gilbert Hay, Robert Bruce's brothers Thomas, Alexander, and Edward, as well as Sir Neil Campbell and the Earl of Lennox.

Recovering, leaving John Comyn, 3rd Earl of Buchan unsubdued at his rear, Robert Bruce returned west to take Balvenie and Duffus Castles, then Tarradale Castle on the Black Isle.

The Harrying of Buchan in 1308 was ordered by Robert Bruce to make sure all Comyn family support was extinguished.

In less than a year Robert Bruce had swept through the north and destroyed the power of the Comyns who had held vice-regal power in the north for nearly one hundred years.

Robert Bruce lacked siege weapons and it's unlikely his army had substantially greater numbers or was better armed than his opponents.

Robert Bruce then crossed to Argyll and defeated the isolated MacDougalls at the Battle of Pass of Brander and took Dunstaffnage Castle, the last major stronghold of the Comyns and their allies.

Robert Bruce then ordered harryings in Argyle and Kintyre, in the territories of Clan MacDougall.

Robert Bruce drove back a subsequent English expedition north of the border and launched raids into Yorkshire and Lancashire.

Robert Bruce later went there with another army to assist his brother.

In conjunction with the invasion, Robert Bruce popularised an ideological vision of a "Pan-Gaelic Greater Scotia" with his lineage ruling over both Ireland and Scotland.

In 1325 Robert Bruce I exchanged lands at Cardross for those of Old Montrose in Angus with Sir David Graham.

Robert Bruce had been suffering from a serious illness from at least 1327.

Robert Bruce journeyed overland, being carried on a litter, to Inch in Wigtownshire: houses were built there and supplies brought to that place, as though the king's condition had deteriorated.

Robert Bruce fasted four or five days and prayed to the saint, before returning by sea to Cardross.

Barbour and other sources relate that Robert Bruce summoned his prelates and barons to his bedside for a final council at which he made copious gifts to religious houses, dispensed silver to religious foundations of various orders, so that they might pray for his soul, and repented of his failure to fulfil a vow to undertake a crusade to fight the 'Saracens' in the Holy Land.

Robert Bruce arranged for perpetual soul masses to be funded at the chapel of Saint Serf, at Ayr and at the Dominican friary in Berwick, as well as at Dunfermline Abbey.

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Contemporary accusations that Robert Bruce suffered from leprosy, the "unclean sickness"—the present-day, treatable Hansen's disease—derived from English and Hainault chroniclers.

Robert Bruce's viscera were interred in the chapel of Saint Serf, his regular place of worship and close to his manor house in the ancient Parish of Cardross.

Robert Bruce had bequeathed sufficient funds to pay for thousands of obituary masses in Dunfermline Abbey and elsewhere, and his tomb would thus be the site of daily votive prayers.

Robert Bruce's descendants include all later Scottish monarchs and all British monarchs since the Union of the Crowns in 1603.

Robert Bruce I was originally buried in Dunfermline Abbey, traditional resting-place of Scottish monarchs since the reign of Malcolm Canmore.

Robert Bruce's tomb, imported from Paris, was extremely elaborate, carved from gilded alabaster.

Bust of Robert Bruce is in the Hall of Heroes of the National Wallace Monument in Stirling.

Statue of Robert Bruce stands in the High Street in Lochmaben and another in Annan in front of the town's Victorian hall.

At the last moment, Robert Bruce swiftly dodged the lance, rose in his saddle, and with one mighty swing of his axe, struck Bohun so hard that he split de Bohun's iron helmet and his head in two, a blow so powerful that it shattered the very weapon into pieces.