Robert the Bruce(1274–1329)

Robert Bruce was born at Turnberry Castle on the Ayrshire coast in 1274, into one of the three or four most powerful noble houses in Scotland: a Norman-Scottish line that had held the lordship of Annandale since the reign of David I, and the earldom of Carrick through his mother. The family carried a credible claim to the Scottish throne through his grandfather Robert de Brus, known as the Competitor.

When Edward I of England invaded in 1296 and the Wars of Scottish Independence began, the Scottish crown stood vacant and contested. On 25 March 1306, with the kingdom hanging in the balance, Bruce was crowned King of Scots at Scone and took up the cause of an independent Scotland as its anointed king.

The early years tested him to the limit, and he met the test. Driven into hiding among the western isles after an early defeat, he came back. This is the period from which the legend of Bruce and the spider descends: the lesson of patience and persistence under adversity that has carried his name down the centuries. Through 1307 and 1308 he rebuilt his army in the south-west and retook Edward's castles one by one in a brilliant campaign of manoeuvre, until by 1313 only Stirling Castle remained in English hands.

On 23 to 24 June 1314, near Bannockburn outside Stirling, Bruce's force of about 6,000 met an English army of about 15,000 under Edward II and won a total victory. It was the decisive Scottish military success of the medieval period and the foundation of Bruce kingship. The Declaration of Arbroath of 1320, sealed under his authority, asserted Scottish sovereignty in language that has shaped the national argument ever since, and the Treaty of Edinburgh and Northampton in 1328 secured formal English recognition of Scottish independence and of Bruce as king.

The Bruce name became royal under him. His son David II ruled Scotland from 1329 to 1371; through David's niece Marjorie Bruce, who married Walter Stewart, the Bruce blood passed into the royal House of Stewart and on into the modern line. The surname today carries this royal-house weight in a way no other Scottish family name does. The Bannockburn battlefield is preserved as a national monument; the Bruce heart rests at Melrose Abbey and his body at Dunfermline.