Bruce, Robert, later Robert I, commonly known as Robert the Bruce 1274-1329
King of Scotland from 1306, hero of the Scottish War of Independence

Robert the Bruce was born either at Turnberry in Ayrshire or in Essex. In 1296, as Earl of Carrick, he swore fealty to Edward I at Berwick, and in 1297 renewed his oath of homage at Carlisle. Shortly after, with his Carrick vassals, he joined the Scottish revolt under William Wallace. He was appointed one of the four guardians of Scotland in 1298, but did not fight against Edward again until the final rising in 1306. His stabbing of John Comyn ('the Red Comyn'), the nephew of John de Balliol and a rival with a better claim to the throne, in the church of the Minorite Friars in Dumfries (10 February 1306), allowed him to assert his own claim and two months later he was crowned king at Scone.

Between 1306 and 1314 he developed from a master of guerrilla warfare into a national leader, despite scepticism by some as to his legal status. Two defeats in 1306, one by an English army at Methven, near Perth, the other by the Lord of Argyll, a kinsman of the Comyns, at Dalry, near Tyndrum in Perthshire, forced him to flee, probably to Rathlin Island off the north coast of Ireland.

The turnabout in his fortunes between 1307 and 1309 began in his own south-west territory, with the defeat of an English force at Loudoun (May 1307). The death of Edward I the following July brought to the English throne a king, Edward II, who lacked his father's iron will and drive. By 1309 Robert was able to hold his first parliament (in St Andrews), which was, however, attended only by Bruce supporters.

Spectacular military success between 1310 and 1314, when he won control of northern Scotland, resolved the doubts of many. A series of strongholds were recaptured, leaving only Lothian outside his control. In early 1314 the castles of Edinburgh and Roxburgh also fell to him, leaving Stirling as the only English stronghold north of the Forth. The victory (24 June 1314) at Bannockburn, near Stirling, over a larger English army of nearly 20,000 men, did not end the Anglo-Scottish war, which went on until 1328 or later, but it did virtually settle the Scottish civil war, leaving Robert I unchallenged.

For 10 years the north of England was raided (Berwick was taken in 1318) and a second front was opened upby Robert's brother, Edward, in Ireland in 1315. The Declaration of Arbroath, a letter composed in 1320 by his chancellor, Bernard de Linton, and a mission to Avignon, finally persuaded Pope John XXII to recognize Robert as king in 1323. A truce with England brought a temporary suspension of hostilities, but Robert took advantage of the accession of the young Edward III in 1327 to force the Treaty of Northampton (1328), which secured English acknowledgement of Scottish independence and his own right to the throne. He was succeeded by David II, his son by his second wife.

Bibliography: J Barbour, The Brus (c.1375); later editions by W W Skeat (ed), The Bruce (2 vols, 1894), and by M P McDiarmid and J A C Stevenson (eds), Barbour's Bruce (vols 2 and 3, 1980). See also G W S Barrow, Robert Bruce and the Community of the Realm of Scotland (1965).