and his son, the Earl of Carrick. They united the chief influence of the south and west of Scotland against the party of John de Baliol, lord of Galloway, and the Comyns. A period of civil war ensued, during which Robert de Bruce, lord of Annandale, asserted his title to the crown. Unable to secure his aim, Bruce took part in the negotiations at Salisbury, which resulted in the treaty of Brigham in 1290, with the view of uniting Scotland to England, subject to guarantees for its independence by the marriage of Margaret to Prince Edward. The death of Margaret reopened the question of the succession, and one of the regents, William Fraser, bishop of St. Andrews, made the appeal to Edward I as arbiter, which led to the famous competition at Norham in 1291–2, decided in favour of John de Baliol on 17 Nov. 1292. According to Sir F. Palgrave, Bruce had also some years before appealed to Edward, but the documents adduced to prove this are without date, and the ascription of at least one of them to Bruce is conjectural. The course of litigation at Norham, where Bruce, as well as Baliol, recognised Edward’s title as lord paramount to decide the cause, and the grounds upon which the claim of Bruce was rejected, have been stated in the life of Baliol [q. v.] A protest by Bruce amongst the documents carried off by Edward from Scotland, afterwards delivered to Baliol (Acta Parl. Scot. i. 116), and an agreement for mutual defence between Bruce and Florence, count of Holland, another of the competitors, entered into on 14 June 1292 (Documents illustrative of the History of Scotland, edited by Rev. J. Stevenson, i. 318), show that Bruce was not disposed to acquiesce in the adverse decision. His great age prevented him from any active measures to overturn it, and he resigned his rights and claims in favour of his son, the Earl of Carrick. He retired to his castle of Lochmaben, where he died on Good Friday, 1294–1295, at the age of eighty-five, and was interred at Guisburn in Cleveland, the family burial-place, where his stately tomb may still be seen. His character is well drawn in Walter of Hemingford: ‘Toto tempore vitæ sum gloriosus extitit; facetus, dives, et largus, et habundavit in omnibus in vita et in morte’ He had three sons: Robert, earl of Carrick, Barnard, and John.
[Dougdale's Baronage, i. 450; Rymer's Fœdera, i. 698; Documents illustrating the newly of Scotland, ed. Sir F. Palgrave; Ord's History of Cleveland; Foss's Judges of England, ii. 269.]
BRUCE, ROBERT de VII, Earl of Carrick (1253–1304), son of the Competitor, Robert de Bruce VI, is said to have accompanied Edward, afterwards Edward I, in the crusade of 1269. On his return he married Marjory, countess of Carrick, and became by the courtesy of Scotland Earl of Carrick.
A romantic story handed down by the Scottish historians, that Bruce was carried off by the heiress when hunting near her castle of Turnberry, is probably an invention to excuse his marriage with a royal ward without the king’s consent. In 1278 he did homage to Edward on behalf of Alexander III for his English fiefs. In 1281 he borrowed 40l. from his old comrade Edward I, a debt which played a part in the fortunes of his son. He was present at Scone in 1284, when the right of succession of the Maid of Norway was recognised, but took part with his father and the other nobles in the league of Turnberry, on 20 Sept. 1286, intended to defeat it. Like his father, however, he joined in the treaty of Brigham (14 March 1290), rendered abortive by Margaret’s death. The agreement between Florence, count of Holland, and his father on 14 June 1292, to which the earl was a party, shows that Bruce anticipated an adverse decision. About this time he went to Norway with his eldest daughter Isabel, possibly on account of her marriage to King Eirik, the widower of Margaret, the daughter of Alexander III, which took place on 15 Nov. 1293, but also perhaps to avoid attendance at Baliol's parliament, to which he was summoned. It may have been with the same motive that after the death of his wife in 1292 he resigned the earldom of Carrick to his son, afterwards king (A. P. Scot. i. 449 a b). On the death of his father he did homage to Edward for his English fiefs on 4 June 1295. On 6 Oct. following he was given the custody of the castle of Carlisle during the king's pleasure, and three days after he took before the bishop of Durham and barons of the exchequer an oath to hold it faithfully and render it to no one but the king. When Baliol attempted to assert his independence, as was natural, his rivals the Bruces sided with Edward, and in 1296, after that monarch had taken Dunbar, Bruce the elder, according to the Scotch chroniclers, claimed the fulfilment of a promise, by which he was to be made king of Scotland. The answer, in Norman-French, of Edward, as given by Wyntoun (B. viii. 1927) and Fordun, though it has been doubted, suits his character:—
Ne avons ren autres chos a fere
Que a vous reamgs (i.e. reaulmes) ganere
. . . . . .
Hawe I nought ellys to do nowe
But wyn a kynryk to gyve yhowe?
