I The claim by many previous historians that Robert Bruce ‘the Competitor’ served as a royal judge in England and became the first chief justice to be appointed there is due to a confusion between his name and that of Robert de Briwes, a leading English lawyer at that time, cf. Professor A. A. M. Duncan, S.H.R., Vol. xlv, 186

II After being taken to the Tower of London, John Balliol was moved to a manor house in Hertfordshire where he was allowed a huntsman, a page and ten hounds with permission to hunt in any of the King’s forests south of the Trent. Here he remained until he was handed over to the Pope in July 1299, cf. Stevenson, 121 and 163

III This is based on circumstantial evidence. According to Rishanger, 384, Wallace was knighted by a prominent man of the Scottish race, ‘de illa natione praecipuus’, which implies one of the earls. At that time the Earl of Fife was a minor. The Earls of Angus and Dunbar supported the English, the northern Earls of Caithness, Sutherland, Ross and Mar were remote from the sphere of action, the Earls of Atholl and Menteith were in France. The remaining earls were Buchan, Strathearne, Lennox and Carrick. Of these only the Earl of Carrick was related to the Wallaces for the uncle of William Wallace, Sir Richard Wallace, was married to a Bruce and the link continued into the next generation by the marriage between William Wallace’s cousin, Sir Duncan Wallace, to Eleanora, Countess of Carrick, the widow of Alexander Bruce, Earl of Carrick. It is significant also that, when Wallace relinquished the post of guardian after Falkirk, the only earl to be chosen as one of the two succeeding guardians was Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick.

IV In the papal bull Scimus Fili, which was delivered to Edward I at Sweetheart Abbey on his return from his Galloway campaign in 1300, Pope Boniface admonished him that the kingdom of Scotland ‘was not feudally subject to your ancestors … nor is it so to you’. In reply Edward had an elaborate legal brief prepared in justification of his claim to the suzerainty of Scotland. This was presented to the papal court in 1301. In the same year the Scots sent a delegation of three to the Vatican bearing with them a Processus (legal document) to combat the English claims. Master Baldred Bisset, main author of the Processus and chief spokesman for the delegation, was a graduate of Bologna University and president of the bishops’ ordinary court at St Andrews. Andrew Wyntoun calls him a ‘wys and cunnand clerk’ (Wyntoun ii, 351) and anyone who reads his counterblast to the English submissions to the court must regard it as a little masterpiece.

V Later in the century a popular verse epitomized the methods of Robert Bruce, which paraphrased runs as follows: 

On foot should be all Scottish war

Let hill and marsh their foes debar

And woods as walls prove such an arm

That enemies do them no harm.

In hidden spots keep every store

And burn the plainlands them before

So, when they find the land lie waste

Needs must they pass away in haste

Harried by cunning raids at night

And threatening sounds from every height.

Then, as they leave, with great array

Smite with the sword and chase away.

This is the counsel and intent

Of Good King Robert’s Testament. 

 VI Those illegitimate children of Robert Bruce of whom records exist are:

  1. Sir Robert Bruce, received 500 marks yearly from the King, died at the battle of Dupplin, 12 August 1332
  2. Nigel Bruce of Carrick, received £30 yearly from the King, slain at the battle of Durham, 17 October 1346
  3. Margaret Bruce, married Robert Glen, mentioned in records as alive on 29 February 1364
  4. Elizabeth Bruce, married Sir Walter Oliphant of Gask
  5. Christian Bruce of Carrick, recorded as in receipt of a pension from the King in 1328 and 1329. The names of their mothers are not known cf. Dunbar 142

VII Edward II was constantly changing his viceroys, as can be seen from the list below. It is probable that such an office in a hostile country was not popular.

VIII The following Highland clans claim to have taken part in the Battle of Bannockburn, the majority serving under their own chiefs: Cameron, Campbell, Chisholm, Fraser, Gordon, Grant, Gunn, MacKay, MacIntosh, Macpherson, Macquarrie, Maclean, MacDonald, MacFar-lane, MacGregor, MacKenzie, Menzies, Munro, Robertson, Ross, Sinclair and Sutherland, cf. Christison, 10

IX The steady rise in the population of western Europe throughout the thirteenth century had been accompanied by an increase in the spread of agriculture. But early in the fourteenth century two ominous factors intervened. ‘The boundary of productive land had been pushed to its limits’. ‘A change for the worse in the climate occurred. Winters were longer and colder. Summers were colder and wetter’. The margin between adequacy of food supplies and dearth narrowed to a hairline, cf. Hay, 31, 32. In the summer of 1315 there were torrential rains which began on 11 May and continued almost unceasingly throughout the summer and autumn, causing a failure of crops from the Pyrenees to Russia. The ground became so sodden that few sowings could be made for the harvest of 1316, so that by the autumn of that year famine had stalked through the western world for two years running. Thousands died from hunger and thousands from pestilence which attacked the emaciated frames of the populace, cf. Lucas, 343

X The abbey of Coupar-Angus was the daughter church of Melrose, the daughter of Rievaulx, the daughter of Clairvaux where St Malachy had died, cf. Barrow, 438

XI A fisherman had built himself a little hut beside the river so that he could watch his nets. Within it was a bed, a small fire and a single door. One night he rose to see to his nets and was away a long while. When he returned he saw by the light of the fire a fox inside the hut devouring a salmon. Quickly he stepped into the doorway and, drawing his sword, cried, ‘Traitor, thou must die.’

          The fox, in great fear, glanced on every side but could see no way of escape except through the door which was blocked by the man. Beside him, lying on the bed, was a woollen cloak. Seizing it in his teeth, he drew it across the fire. When the man saw his cloak burning he rushed to save it and the fox sprang through the door and made his escape.

          The Scots, said Douglas, are the fox and the English the man and we shall escape as cleverly as the fox, cf. Barbour, 345, 346

XII During the reformation in the sixteenth century, the tombs of the Scottish kings and queens in Dunfermline Abbey and part of the Abbey itself were destroyed. In 1819 workmen repairing the floor of the abbey uncovered the skeleton of a man on the site assigned by tradition to the tomb of Robert Bruce. The skeleton was exhumed and examined by Robert Liston, an Edinburgh surgeon. Part of the breastbone had been sawn away so that the heart could be removed, cf. MacKay, 180