Robert the Bruce King of the Scots, by Michael Penman

Abstract

Robert the Bruce King of the Scots, by Michael Penman. New Haven, Yale University Press, 2014. xi, 443 pp. $45.00 US (cloth). The seven hundredth anniversary of the Scots' victory against the English on the field of Bannockburn and the approach of a new referendum on Scottish independence have prompted the publication of a host of studies of the kingdom's most glorious moment and its most famous son. For some forty years authors laying claim to serious scholarship have almost inevitably begun their studies of the period with a careful examination of Geoffrey Barrow's monumental biography, Robert Bruce and the Community of the Realm of Scotland (Edinburgh University Press, 1965, 1976, 1988, 2005). Yet, for all the accolades showered on this book (the front dust cover on the 2005 edition describes it as [t]he best book on Scottish history ever written) and despite no fewer than four editions, the Robert Bruce of Barrow fame has remained a relatively elusive figure: a man gifted with the ability to conceive of his small kingdom as a fully sovereign nation, a political player whose ruthlessness matched--and occasionally outweighed --his qualities as a ruler, a valiant knight, a good judge of potential enemies and likely supporters, but ultimately a figure largely indistinguishable from the hero of late medieval and early modern Scottish myth. Penman's Robert Bruce boasts all the qualities of the idol, but is a figure with considerably more substance. He was in some senses remarkable, in others ordinary, a king who demonstrated both shrewd judgment and poor miscalculation, a genuinely pious Christian but also a ruler unusually indifferent to the spectre of excommunication. In Penman's capable hands, in short, Robert I loses many of his Hegelian qualities while maintaining his sterling reputation as the greatest of Scottish kings. Some of Penman's conclusions will be thoroughly familiar to admirers of the medieval king. In the difficult years of the early reign widespread opposition to Bruce's seizure of the throne created deep rifts in Scottish magnate society, particularly among those who, through kinship or by affinity, sided with the Comyn family and viewed the Balliol crown as legitimate. English designs on the Scottish kingdom (although diminished after the death of Edward I) and the enduring censure of the papacy presented serious challenges to the establishment, then the maintenance, of Bruce's rule. Although more secure on the throne after the discovery and suppression of a plot to topple him in 1320, Bruce's failure to produce a male heir (until March 1326) posed a threat to the stability of his regime and, in 1315 and 1318, lay at the heart of contentious efforts to legislate the royal succession in parliament. The treaty of 1328 with England finally recognized the sovereign status of the kingdom of the Scots, but created fresh obstacles for Bruce and his infant successor when it failed to resolve the claims of the so-called Disinherited. If there is much in this work that is recognizable, there is also a great deal that is new and exciting. Penman's skill in separating historical fact from a tangle of medieval and modern sources is laudable and his command of recent scholarly literature relating to fourteenth-century Scotland, Ireland, England, and Europe comprehensive. His wide reading of primary and secondary sources enables him to place Bruce firmly within the political, cultural, and economic contexts of his day and to offer valuable insights into the latter's life and career. …