Great was the task that Robert Bruce took upon himself and unbearable the burdens upon his shoulders. His mishaps, flights and dangers; hardships and weariness; hunger and thirst; watchings and fastings; nakedness and cold; snares and banishment; the seizing, imprisoning, slaughter and downfall of his near ones and – even more – his dear ones no-one now living, I think, recollects or is equal to rehearsing.
But if there were one to tell how with a glad and dauntless heart Robert Bruce triumphed single handed over all the ill-luck and numberless straits through which he went: the victories and battles, where, by the Lord’s help, by his own strength and by his human manhood he cut fearlessly his way into the columns of the enemy, now mightily bearing these down and now mightily warding off and escaping the pains of death – then such a one, I deem, would prove that in the art of fighting and in vigour of body, Robert had not his match in his time in any clime.
John Fordun’s fourteenth-century Chronicle of the Scottish Nation