Castle Characters - Mary Bruce
Mary Bruce
Our next Castle Character is Mary Bruce, although she would more accurately be Mary de Brus – there’s those French names again! It might surprise a lot of people to learn that the Bruce family was not originally Scottish. They were, like a lot of British nobles, originally Normans from the north of France – “Brus” is now known as Brix in La Manche, where the main square is still known as Place Robert Bruce. Almost everyone knows something about Robert the Bruce (usually the story about the spider), but his sister? Not so much. In fact, medieval women are often almost invisible in traditional history books. The chroniclers at the time usually only mention them when they marry or give birth to someone important, and as a result it can be difficult to get a good idea of who they were or what their lives were like. As with the other Castle Characters we are left to try and piece together Mary’s life from a lot of little mentions in various sources. So here goes!
Born a Bruce
It would be impossible to tell Mary’s story without a bit of family history first. The Bruce family were undoubtedly one of the most powerful families in medieval Scotland, but they also held a lot of land in England as well – Mary’s father, Robert (lots of Robert the Bruces!) was the Lord of Annandale in Scotland but also the Lord of Hartlepool and other estates in the north-east of England. He had fought alongside Henry III of England and his son Prince Edward against rebellious barons, he later went on Crusade with Prince Edward and served as constable of Carlisle Castle. Ironic for someone whose family would go on to become Edward’s bitterest enemies.
The arms of de Brus
Not only did they hob-nob with English royalty, but they were also closely related to the Scottish royal family, along with several other noble houses like the Balliols and the Comyns. While there was always tension between rival noble houses in the middle ages, these came to a head in 1286. In this year, the King of Scots (they were always called Kings of Scots rather than of Scotland), Alexander III died after falling from his horse while riding to visit his young Queen for her birthday. Alexander’s daughter had been married to the King of Norway, and so the crown passed to their daughter, called Margaret the Maid of Norway. No medieval Kingdom was in a stable position while a child was on the throne, and Margaret was only 3 when she took the crown in 1286. The Lords of Scotland tried to ensure peace with their powerful and sometimes aggressive southern neighbour by arranging for Margaret to marry the son of the King of England – had she lived, their children would have inherited the throne of both England and Scotland centuries before James VI and I did so in 1603.
Unfortunately, it was not to be, and little Margaret fell ill in Orkney on her way to be crowned in 1290 and died. This left the throne of Scotland empty, and the various powerful noble houses began to clamour for power, and each put forwards their rival claim. The most powerful of these families were Bruce and Balliol. To avoid a civil war, the Scottish Lords invited King Edward of England to come and judge between the different claimants. Edward decided in favour of John Balliol, the main rival of the Bruce family. Like Bruce, Balliol owned lands in England and Scotland – in fact, John Balliol was the baron of Bywell and supplied troops to garrison Newcastle Castle, as well as owning Barnard Castle. Perhaps Edward saw in John Balliol someone weak that he could control as King of Scots. The Bruce family must have been disappointed, but better to lose this way than in a Civil War. They bided their time and waited, outwardly loyal to John Balliol.
John Balliol swears fealty to Edward I at Newcastle Castle
Balliol’s reign did not end well. In 1292 in Newcastle Castle, Edward and John Balliol spent Christmas together, and Edward made the King of Scots swear loyalty to him. From then on, he took every opportunity to meddle in Scottish politics until at last the Scottish lords, tired of what they saw as English bullying, deposed Balliol in 1296. Edward, bad tempered like all his family, was enraged and launched an invasion of Scotland that was to lead to centuries of war between the two countries.
At first many of the Scottish lords like Bruce sided with Edward and the English, and the rebellion was led by mere knights like Sir William Wallace and Sir Andrew de Moray. But eventually the Bruce family turned against the English crown when it became obvious that the only way they would get the crown of Scotland was to take it for themselves. In 1306 Robert the Bruce, Mary’s older brother, invited his last major rival, John Comyn, to a meeting at Greyfriars Church in Dumfries and stabbed him to death. From that point, there was no going back – he was an outlaw, and his choice was to take and hold the throne of Scotland or die. He was crowned in March 1306.
A Right Royal Upbringing
Mary Bruce was born in 1282, so she was just 8 years old when her family became embroiled in the struggle for the Scottish throne. Medieval families tended to be very large, and Mary was the 6th of 11 children! As the child of a noble family, she would almost certainly have been sent away from home at the age of around 7 to be educated in the household of one of her family’s allies. There she would have learned to read and write as well as many other skills considered vital for a noblewoman: manners and etiquette, dancing, riding, embroidery, music and the management of large estates, castles, and farms. Generally, they would learn these skills while serving as ladies in waiting to the woman of the household where they were growing up. As with young knights serving as pages, acting as a servant was an honourable profession. We don’t know exactly where Mary grew up or was educated, but there’s no reason to think that her childhood didn’t follow exactly this pattern.
By the time her older brother was crowned King of Scots in 1306, Mary was a grown woman of 24. She was with Robert at Scone when he was crowned. This was the culmination of all the ambitions her family had held for decades, but it cannot have been an entirely happy occasion for the family. Edward I of England, enraged by the news of Bruce’s murder of John Comyn was already assembling an army to invade Scotland, with orders to capture and execute Bruce and anyone bearing arms alongside him.
The Wrath of Longshanks
An illustration of Mary in her cage, from about 400 years after it happened
In June 1306, just three months after he had been crowned, King Robert the Bruce was defeated in battle by the English at Methven. He barely escaped with his life, and many of his close friends and supporters were captured and executed by the English. Realising that this could be a long and desperate struggle, Robert the Bruce retreated into the wilderness with his small army of followers and sent away the women of his family with his brother, Sir Neil Bruce to protect them. This included Mary and her sister Christina, his wife Elizabeth de Burgh, his daughter Marjorie and Isabella MacDuff, the Countess of Buchan, one his strongest supporters.
They fled north to Kildrummy Castle in Aberdeenshire, but the Castle was besieged and taken by the English, and Sir Neil Bruce, Mary’s brother, was taken by the English to Berwick where he was hanged, drawn and quartered. Somehow, the women escaped the capture of the castle and fled north with another supporter, Sir John de Atholl (grandfather of our Sir Aymer!). They were seeking the sanctuary of the Church of St Duthac in Tain, but they were betrayed by the Earl of Ross, captured, and handed over to the English.
Edward I of England was absolutely determined to show no mercy to the family or supporters of Robert the Bruce. Even knights and nobles captured fighting for Bruce were not shown the usual courtesy of being held for ransom but were executed as rebels against his authority. Now it was the turn of Mary and the other women in the Bruce family to be subjected to the anger of the English King. Mary and Isabella of Buchan were subjected to the harshest punishment of all, which must mean that King Edward was singling them out for the strong support they had shown for Robert the Bruce and his cause. Noblewomen taken prisoner in war would usually expect a comfortable ‘house arrest’, but Mary was locked in a cage in one of the towers of Roxburgh Castle, exposed to the ridicule of the inhabitants. Her friend Isabella suffered a similar imprisonment in Berwick. Their erstwhile protector, John de Atholl, was taken to London where he was beheaded, and his head displayed on London Bridge.
The Tide Turns
This grim imprisonment, which must have come as a terrible humiliation to someone raised in a powerful noble family, lasted for four years. It is difficult to imagine the effect that such harsh imprisonment would have had on a young woman, and Mary must have had an impressive resolve and strength to have survived it. It might have given her some grim satisfaction to know that she outlived her tormentor – in 1307 Edward I marched once again to fight Robert the Bruce, but died of dysentery on the way (not a very dignified way to go.) His son, Edward II, was not the mighty warrior that his father had been, and soon the war began to turn in favour Robert the Bruce and his supporters. He held his first parliament in 1309, and gradually defeated his enemies and captured castles all over Scotland.
With the war turning against him, Edward II ordered important prisoners like Mary to be moved to safer locations, and Mary was moved from Roxburgh to Newcastle in 1310. The harsh conditions were also lessened. Perhaps Edward was softer hearted than his father had been, and didn’t have the same visceral hatred for the Bruce family; perhaps he simply wanted to make sure that his valuable captive stayed alive to be used as political leverage in any negotiations with Robert the Bruce.
Mary’s captivity in Newcastle seems to have been much less traumatic than in Roxburgh. Today, the high-status cell in the Castle keep looks quite grim and forbidding. It is small and quite dark, as it only has a narrow slit rather than a proper window. This is to prevent prisoners from being able to climb out of the window and try and make their way out of the tower that way. This happened on several occasions in this period, for example “Queen” Matilda of England allegedly escaped Oxford Castle by shinning down the tower on a rope in 1142. But there are clues that this room once provided comfortable lodgings for its prisoners. It has its own garderobe or private toilet for example, and there is an aumbry, a simple niche carved into the stone that probably originally held a wooden cupboard or box for storing private valuables. This is not a prison cell designed as a grim dungeon, but a secure lodging for an important prisoner.
While she remained in Newcastle, attempts were being actively made to secure a ransom in return for her release. Today the concept of a princess held captive in a tall stone tower sounds like the stuff of fairy tales, but in the middle ages it was the reality of royal politics! Nor was Mary alone in her captivity – records tell us of a number of other Scottish prisoners, who, being of lower status, were doubtless held in somewhat less comfortable conditions. These included Walter de Moref, Adam de Cunningham, William de Ireland and David of the Glen. A point that is worth making is that while they were imprisoned, the Sheriff of Northumberland, who was their jailer, was responsible for paying their ‘wages’, an allowance of money they received from the King of England. Obviously while he was holding them prisoner they were financially out of pocket! This level of practical chivalry often seems surprising to modern observers, but to a medieval King such generosity and fairness was seen as a mark of the King’s virtues.
The memorial to Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn
Ransom and Release
By 1312 the war was decidedly going against the English. Phillip Mowbray, a powerful English Lord, petitioned the King to allow him to exchange Mary Bruce for his brother who had been taken prisoner by the Scots. Nothing seems to have come of this attempt however, and Mary was still imprisoned in the Castle in 1314, where she would have beheld the full might of the English army mustering in Newcastle Castle at the King’s command to ride north to relieve the siege of Stirling Castle, being held for the English against her brother Robert the Bruce. The army was more than 20,000 strong, the largest English force ever to invade Scotland at the time. It must have filled Mary with dread to see the banners and heraldry of the knights gathered in the Castle alongside King Edward II himself. In the event, the Scots besieging Stirling Castle had less than half the numbers of the English army that came to fight them, only 6000 or so soldiers. But at the Battle of Bannockburn Robert the Bruce utterly routed the army of Edward II. Many of the great English lords, including the commander of the army, Robert Clifford, were killed in the battle, and many more were captured. In the aftermath of this disastrous defeat, which saw King Edward II beating a hasty and humiliating retreat from Scotland, Mary was released in return for English captives taken at the battle, and for the first time in eight years was reunited with her family.
What next?
Sadly, and perhaps predictably, that’s when Mary become a little harder to keep track of. She had gone through eight years of captivity, and once she was released her life became much more typical of a medieval noblewoman. Here we can mainly trace her through mentions of her marriages and the births of her children. She was married to Sir Neill Campbell, one of her brother’s close supporters during the war against England, and bore three children, Iain, Dougal, and Duncan. Neill was granted the lands of David de Atholl, who was exiled to England, so Mary Bruce lived in castles confiscated from the father of our very own Sir Aymer de Atholl! There are links everywhere when you look. Neil Campbell died in 1316, and Mary remarried the same year, marrying Alexander Fraser, Lord Chamberlain of Scotland, and had two more children, John, and William. The fact that al of the children mentioned are boys also opens the possibility that she had further children who simply never cropped up in chronicles. In medieval times the rights to titles tended to come down through the male line, so girls sometimes went completely unmentioned. She died in 1323, at the age of only 41. Her fellow prisoner, Isabella of Buchan, also died young, the harsh conditions of the four-year imprisonment in cages perhaps contributing to their early deaths. It just goes to show that even for the highest ranks of medieval society, life could be hard!