Clan Bruce

History

The name comes from Brix, a place in Normandy between Cherbourg and Valognes. Robert de Brus, or de Bruis, crossed to England around the time of the Norman Conquest of 1066, and his descendants held land in Surrey and Dorset. In 1124 a later Robert de Brus accompanied his companion-in-arms Prince David to Scotland when David became king as David I, who granted him the lordship of Annandale in the south-west. The family's English and Scottish holdings later diverged; the Annandale lordship remained with the Scottish line that became Clan Bruce.

A later Robert Bruce, 4th Lord of Annandale, strengthened the family's standing by marrying Isabel, a kinswoman of King William the Lion — sources differ on whether she was his daughter or his niece. The match gave the Bruces a descent from David, Earl of Huntingdon, and so a claim to the Scottish throne. That claim was tested when the child queen Margaret, Maid of Norway, died in 1290 without an heir. Thirteen claimants came forward in the succession dispute known as the Great Cause; Edward I of England was asked to judge between them. In 1292 he found for John Balliol over the Bruce claimant and John Hastings, and it was a grandson of the unsuccessful competitor who would settle the matter by force.

Robert the Bruce held the earldom of Carrick through his mother, Marjorie, and the lordship of Annandale through his father. Most accounts place his birth at Turnberry Castle in Ayrshire on 11 July 1274, though Historic Environment Scotland records a local tradition that he was born at Lochmaben Castle in Annandale instead. After years of shifting fortune in the wars with England, he was crowned king in 1306 and won the battle that made his name, at Bannockburn in 1314. Scotland's independence was recognised by treaty in 1328. Bruce died the following year and was buried at Dunfermline Abbey; his heart, by his own wish, was carried on crusade before its burial at Melrose Abbey.

His son David II held the throne until 1371, when he died without a direct heir and the crown passed to the House of Stewart. The Bruce name continued through cadet branches. One such branch, granted part of the crown lands of Clackmannan in 1334 for service to the future Robert II, received confirmation of the grant from David II in 1359. The tower the family built there remained Bruce property until the late eighteenth century, and Historic Environment Scotland now cares for what survives of it.

From a Fife branch descended from the coal-mining pioneer Sir George Bruce of Carnock came the Earls of Kincardine, and in 1747 the earldom of Elgin passed to this line when the senior branch died out. Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, is remembered for a more controversial episode: as ambassador to the Ottoman Empire he arranged the removal of sculptures from the Parthenon in Athens between 1802 and 1812, and Parliament bought the collection, now known as the Elgin Marbles, for £35,000 in 1816.

The Standing Council of Scottish Chiefs classes the Bruces, like several other old Scottish names, as a family rather than a clan, though it still recognises a chief. That chief is styled the Earl of Elgin and Kincardine, whose seat is Broomhall House near Dunfermline in Fife. The Bruce tartan worn today is based on a weaver's pattern that Lord Bruce believed dated from 1571.