Between 29th April and 1st May 2006, Scone Palace, the crowning place of Scottish kings, will present a Robert the Bruce Pageant Weekend marking the 700th inauguration of King Robert the Bruce which took place on the Palace’s Moot Hill in March 1306. This event honors one of Sco t land’s greatest national heroes who, during the Wars of Independence, began a guerilla war against the English King Edward I. Bruce’s leadership and preeminent fighting skills eventually gained him the Scottish throne and drove the English out of Scotland.

Bruce was born in July 1274 in Turnberry Castle on Scotland’s west coast. His family was descended by marriage from King David I thus providing him with a legitimate claim to the throne of Scotland. The Bruces, however, had lost out to a cousin, John Balliol in a disputed succession in 1292, and the new king swore allegiance to the English king, Edward I. Shortly thereafter his grandfather, Robert de Brus, 5th Lord of Annandale, the unsuccessful claimant to the throne, resigned his lordship in favor of his son as he had previously resigned the earldom of Carrick on the day of his wife’s death in 1292. Thus Robert the Bruce’s father became Earl of Carrick. In 1295, Robert married his first wife, Isabella of Mar, the daughter of Donald, 10th Earl of Mar. This marriage tied Robert to the Welsh as his mother-inlaw was the daughter of Llywelyn ap Iorweth, Prince of North Wales, and the English crown and Llywelyn’s wife was Joan, the illegitimate daughter of King John of England.

Throughout the early part of what was to be thirty years of struggle for Scotland’s freedom, Bruce suffered from a great deal of distrust due to his alternate support of English and Scottish armies. He and his family, however, believed in his right to the throne, thwarted now by John Comyn, the nephew of John Balliol. Bruce, seeking to neutralize Comyn’s claim to the throne, invited him to a meeting under truce in Dumfries on 10 February 1306. Bruce attacked Comyn before the high altar of the church of the Greyfriars monastery and then fled. Hearing that Comyn had survived, two of Bruce’s supporters, Roger de Kirkpatrick and John Lindsay, returned to the church and finished him off. Bruce was excommunicated for this murder, and realizing that no other alternatives were available other than fugitive or king, he asserted his claim to the crown. He was crowned King of Scots as Robert I by Isabella, Countess of Buchan, who claimed the right of her family, the Macduff Earls of Fife, to place the Scottish king on his throne.

The following eight years were exhausting, marked by deliberate refusal to meet the English on even ground. Many consider Bruce to be one of the great guerrilla leaders of all time.

Bruce went on to campaign in Ireland and also achieved a series of significant diplomatic achievements including the Declaration of Arbroath in 1320. This event eventually led to Pope John XXII lifting his excommunication. Finally, in May 1328 King Edward III of England signed the Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton, recognizing Scotland as an independent kingdom with Bruce as its king.

Robert the Bruce died on 7 June 1329 at the Manor of Cardross in Dunbartonshire. The tradition that he died from leprosy has been rejected by scholars. His cause of death continues to be unclear, but syphilis, psoriasis or a series of strokes have been suggested. He is buried in Dunfermline Abbey, but his heart was taken on crusade by Sir James Douglas and later buried at Melrose Abbey, Roxburghshire.