and Sussex. He wrote many plays, of which the first, entitled ‘The Point of Honour,’ was accepted at Covent Garden in 1792, Munden and Fawcett being in the cast, but was apparently never acted, though it was a fairly amusing comedietta, based largely upon Kenrick's ‘Duellist.’ His most ambitious effort was ‘Thermopylæ, or Repulsed Invasion,’ a tragic drama, in three acts and in verse, based upon Glover's ‘Leonidas.’ It was written in 1792, and played at Gosport, but rejected by the London houses (printed in New British Theatre, 1814, ii. 258). Another play, ‘Cornelia, or a Roman Matron's Jewels,’ was performed at Southampton, Chichester, and Portsmouth ‘with applause’ (printed in The Spirit of the Public Journals, 1810, vol. xiii. 12mo). Some minor pieces are enumerated by Baker (Biogr. Dram. i. 602). Roberdeau also wrote ‘Fugitive Verse and Prose, consisting of Poems Lyric, Obituary, Dramatic, Satiric, and Miscellaneous,’ Chichester, 1803, dedicated to Francis Rawdon-Hastings, second earl of Moira [q. v.], and consisting of trifles, often neatly turned, upon topics of the day. Roberdeau moved to Bath about 1800, and thence to Chelsea, where he died on 7 Jan. 1815. By his wife Elizabeth (d. 4 June 1809), daughter of James Townley, high master of Merchant Taylors' School, he had a large family; three of his sons held posts in the service of the East India Company. The eldest, Henry Townley, a youth who showed great promise both in his official work and in some ‘Essays’ upon Indian subjects, died at Mymensing in Bengal on 28 April 1808 (Gent. Mag. 1808, ii. 1126). The second son, John Thomas, judge at Allahabad, upon the Bengal civil establishment, died at Ryde on 19 Nov. 1818.
[Gent. Mag. 1815 i. 275, 1818 ii. 641; Baker's Biogr. Dramatica; Reuss's Cat. of Living Authors; Genest's Hist. of the Stage, vii. 72; Agnew's Protestant Exiles, 1874, iii. 62, 74; Brit. Mus. Cat.]
ROBERT I (1274–1329), king of Scotland. [See Bruce, Robert de, VIII.]
ROBERT II (1316–1390), the Steward, afterwards king of Scotland, son of Walter III, steward of Scotland, and Marjory, daughter of Robert the Bruce [q. v.], was born on 2 March 1316. His father was fifth in direct male descent from Walter I, son of Alan, and this Walter is described as steward (dapifer) of Malcolm IV in a charter of 24 May 1158, which refers to the stewartry (senescallia) as granted to him by David I. In the prior reign of David I, Walter I was witness to two charters without the designation of Steward, so that the surname of the royal house of Stewart probably dates from the reign of Malcolm IV and the person of Walter I. Its earlier genealogy is uncertain, but an ingenious and learned, though admittedly in part hypothetical, attempt to trace it to the Banquho of Boece and Shakespeare, Thane of Lochaber, has been recently made by the Rev. J. K. Hewison (Bute in the Olden Time, pp. 1–38, Edinburgh, 1895). The chief estates of the Stewarts were in the shires of Renfrew. The Cluniac monastery of Paisley was founded by Walter I in 1160. He died in 1177. His son Alan, his grandson Walter II, his great-grandson Alexander, and his great-great-grandson James are all styled Stewards of Scotland. James, who took the patriotic side in the war of independence, died in the fourth year of Robert the Bruce, and was succeeded by his son, Walter III, whose support of Bruce was rewarded by the hand of his daughter, Marjory Bruce, in 1315. Marjory died in 1316, shortly after the birth of her only child, named Robert, doubtless after his maternal grandfather. The tradition that he owed his bleared or red eyes to a Cæsarian operation after his mother's death, by a fall from her horse near Paisley, is not supported by proof. Lord Hailes ingeniously suggested that it may have been invented to account for the colour of eyes which Froissart describes as like ‘sandal wood,’ or perhaps ‘lined with red silk’ (sendal). On 3 Dec. 1318, after the death of Edward Bruce without issue, the parliament of Scone, in presence of the king, enacted that, if Robert the Bruce should die without lawful heirs of his body, the son of Walter the Steward and Marjory should succeed to the crown, and made the further declaration that the succession should be in future to the heirs male in the direct line, whom failing to the heirs female in the same line, whom failing to the nearest collateral heir male.
On the death of Walter the Steward in 1326, his son Robert succeeded to the office and estates of his father, and three years later, on the death of Robert the Bruce, the latter's young son, David II, became king [see Bruce, David]. When Edward Baliol, by the aid of the English, got possession of part of Scotland, David II was sent to France, and in 1334 Baliol granted the whole estates of Robert, the young Steward, to David Hastings, earl of Atholl. Robert, like his father, had naturally supported the Bruces, and led, when a boy of sixteen, the second division of the Scottish army at the battle of Halidon on 13 July 1333. After Halidon he took refuge in Dumbarton Castle, which Malcolm Fleming still held for David II, and,
