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Robert Bruce's Bones: Reputations, Politics and Identities in Nineteenth-Century Scotland

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ROBERT BRUCE'S BONES:

EPUTATIONS, POLITICS AND IDENTITIES

NINETEENTH-CENTURY SCOTLAND

Michael A. Penman *

'We, on the whole, do our Hero-worship worse

than any other Nation in this world ever did it before.'

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

Introduction

In a recent survey of public opinion in Scotland, the figure of

Robert Bruce, king of Scots (1306-29), was ranked third, with

12% of the vote, in a list of 'most important Scots.' Bruce thus

posted, arguably quite predictably, behind, first, with 36%,

William Wallace (c.1270-1305), the 'people's Champion' of the

Wars of Independence, and second, with 16%, bard and

radical icon Robert Burns (1759-96).

At first glance, these

results chime in neatly with some of the political and media

reaction to such surveys, often from Conservative quarters,

which laments the apparent preference of the Scottish national

character for romantic failures and lads o' pairts with a democ-

ratic tinge (and preferably a dramatic early death) over and

above any successful, authoritarian or upper-class role models

of perhaps questionable political integrity.

Such a collective

reticence about Bruce or his type seems, too, to be echoed

backwards in time: for example, in the public's reluctance to

subscribe to various campaigns in the nineteenth and early

twentieth centuries to fund physical memorials to Bruce, efforts

discussed in detail below. In the same period, the prose and

verse fiction, drama and visual art which revisited the Wars of

Independence almost always cast Bruce in the shadow of

Michael A. Penman IRSS 34 (2009) 7

* Michael Penman is a Senior Lecturer in History at the University

of Stirling: he is a specialist in medieval Scottish History currently

engaged on studies of royal piety in Scotland c.1170-c.1406 and

the reign of Robert Bruce.

Wallace, often strikingly as a waverer (who as earl of Carrick

in fact changed sides on at least five occasions during the Wars

of Independence) and who had to be persuaded to the true

patriotic cause by the words, deeds and sacrifice of the lesser

hero knight.

These potent and inherited criteria of Scottish national

iconicity seem also to explain in part the impression I presented

in an earlier study, of a curiously 'muted' contemporary

response to the discovery in February 1818, by workmen

breaking ground on the new parish church at Dunfermline in

Fife, of what were immediately assumed to be the grave and

bones of Robert Bruce.

Admittedly, as Dunfermline historian

and churchman Ebenezer Henderson (1809-79), the son of a

local watchmaker, later asserted, 'for months it was the all-

absorbing talk' and there was much excited coverage of the

event in 'newspapers, magazines and flysheets [penny broad-

sides].'

Over eighteen months later, the Office of the King's

Remembrancer, a branch of the Exchequer, also oversaw an

inspection, recording and re-interment of the remains within

Dunfermline's new church which was again reported in the

Scottish and English press. Yet there was apparently no wider

or sustained public reaction. Despite promises at the time of

the reburial, no 'public' monument would be erected over the

remains of Scotland's most famous king until 1889, nor did

George IV visit Dunfermline during his jaunt to Scotland in

1822. Bruce did not suddenly rise in the estimation of his

countrymen to serve as a 'usable' political icon to the same

degree as Wallace or Burns, figures celebrated by numerous

eponymous Georgian and Victorian civic societies. My earlier

article served as a survey of the historiogr aphy of Bruce from

medieval chronicles to c194 5, sampling academic and popular

histories, chapbooks, novels, plays, poems, school texts and

some visual imagery. This thus offered up the notion that it

was on the one hand an imprecise mixture of political

concerns raised in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars and fear

of popular revolt, and on the other a widespread preference

for the 'universal' and radical qualities of the figure of Wallace

(or Burns), which left the discovery and reburial of Bruce's

remains under-commemorated and something of a damp

squib, certainly to modern eyes.

Nevertheless, there remain many more details to flesh out.

What was the contemporary reaction to the exhumation of the

8 Robert Bruce's Bones

remains and their treatment by particular institutions and

prominent individuals? What political, social and economic

factors may indeed have influenced responses to the bones

and their re-interment? Is it an anachronism to assume that the

national (rather than the purely local) reaction of the establish-

ment and wider public should have been much greater and

that the victor of Bannockburn's mortal remains should have

been treasured and re-presented with a substantial monument

accompanied by a flurry of popular written memorials as part

of a significant re-assessment and re-deployment of his reputa-

tion? Dr Ian Fraser's recent study of 'Bruce's tomb' has also

offered the cautious conclusion that there was and remains no

definitive proof that the bones found actually belonged to that

monarch.

Nonetheless, what does it say that in that age of

enlightened historical inquiry, the generation of Sir Walter

Scott (1771-1832) and Patrick Tytler (1791-1849) and their

followers, no one at the time seriously questioned whether or

not these actually were the remains of the hero king?

Church Extension and Local Politics

By the early nineteenth century, like many growing parishes, the

Church of Scotland congregation of Dunfermline was in need

of repaired and improved fabric and, above all, extended pew

space.

However, Dunfermline's heritors had long struggled

with a number of complicating factors. After the sacking of the

Benedictine abbey church during the Reformation of 1560, the

Protestant congregation had occupied and maintained the

older, western nave of Dunfermline's monastic building, the

site of the original churches of Queen/St Margaret (d.1093,

canonised 1249) and her son, David I king of Scots (d.1153).

The heritors buttressed the nave's weakened walls in the

seventeenth century and erected wooden partitions and lofts in

its Romanesque interior to satisfy the social hierarchy of their

royal burgh. This ad hoc blend of conservation and utility was

undertaken with at least half an eye to the wishes and possible

material assistance of successive Stuart and then Hanoverian

monarchs and their governments as ultimate superiors of

the 'old extent' of the temporal lordship of Dunfermline

and as heirs of the ancient monarchical line interred within

the abbey. But matters could often also be muddied from

within by the personal, political and material concerns of indi-

vidual heritors, incumbent ministers, Provosts and councillors,

Michael A. Penman IRSS 34 (2009) 9

as well as from without by rival burghs and governmental

parties.

Yet these factors only explain in part why it was the later

eighteenth century before any measure of antiquarian concern

was expressed for the remains of the adjacent eastern choir of

Dunfermline's extended later medieval abbey. Admit tedly,

antiquarian enthusiasm in general in Scotland before c.1780

was focussed far more upon (often romanticised) topograph-

ical and archaeological descriptions and mapping, especially

of pre-historic and Roman remains, rather than specific

studies and conservation of medieval (and if ecclesiastical,

Catholic) sites and their extant written records.

However,

the foundation of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland

in Edinburgh in 1780 and the impetus this body gave to

Sir John Sinclair of Ulbster's Statistical Account of Scotland

(1791-9) and its component ministerial survey of parochial

antiquities reflected a growth of interest in monastic and other

pre-Reformation church remains which was echoed at

Dunfermline.

Amateur investigations of the abbey remains were under-

taken there by churchmen-antiquaries in 1766 and 1807:

together with local memories and a handful of extant images,

these early 'digs' depicted general if imprecise decay and

collapse throughout the eastern choir portion at Dunfermline.

This section had housed the high altar and the large

pilgrimage shrine of St Margaret, as well as the satellite

funerary monuments of at least seven kings, their queens and

children, noble kin and, surely, a number of monastic clergy.

But there is little or no evidence at all as to the precise loca-

tions and arrangements of these tombs (save the marble base

of St Margaret's shrine) or of the scale and nature of damage

inflicted upon them at at the Reformation in 1560 or by subse-

quent generations of Protestant townsfolk seeking curios or

stone and other materials to recycle; nor can account be taken

of the unseen actions of incumbent ministers or passing

soldiers and other visitors over 250 years. It is surely thus

unwise to even cautiously assume that greater damage by far

would have been done, to what might otherwise have been

fairly intact royal monumental shrines and their underlying

graves, by the ravages of centuries of time and the elements,

with the eastern choir reported as roofless and ruinous within

a few years of 1560 and suffering the brunt of several major

10 Robert Bruce's Bones

gable-wall and tower collapses thereafter (1672, 1726, 1753,

1807).

Indeed, the aforementioned amateur investigations and the

first Statistical Account of Dunfermline parish (1791-9) paint a still

understandably rambling and romantic image of the ruined

choir by the early nineteenth century: it was to be found

periodically 'three or four feet deep' in rubble and weeds, or

alternatively open in spots to use as a cemetery (known to

locals as the 'Psalter Churchyard'). In 1766 and 1807 the

remains of at least six elite grave slabs and four stone coffins

had been reported beneath the debris along with numerous

ancient bones, but this did not spur further systematic anti-

quarian inquiry or measured recording.

Yet from early 1807

Dunfermline's heritors did begin concerted attempts to

improve their church, precipitated by the collapse of the

south-western tower in a storm in August that year.

At first, though, conjectural plans focused on simply

revamping the interior of the serving nave. This perhaps

reflected, on the one hand, tensions between the Tory mercan-

tile party which dominated Dunfermline burgh Council in

opposition to the craft and manufacturing guilds, and, on the

other, an awareness of the chronic indebtedness of a burgh

mired in corrupt land-lease and electoral practices. But the

recorded minutes of meetings of the Dunfermline heritors

reveal that it was through the representations of that perhaps

somewhat unknown quantity, Thomas Bruce, 7

earl of Elgin

(1766-1841), of Parthenon Marbles fame, recently returned

(1806) to his nearby Grecian great house of Broomhall after

four years of arrest in Paris, that plans were first directed

towards the erection of a new parish church on the site of the

eastern choir shell.

The several possible motives of Elgin and others for

forwarding this plan over the next decade might be all too

easily exaggerated. Such a project would fulfil Elgin's deeply-

felt responsibility as Dunfermline's chief heritor. It would

ensure that good seating was available in a church of suitable

status for a royal burgh for a congregation of up to 1,400

people out of a growing population of about 11,600. More -

over, according to the memorial presented to the heritors on

Elgin's behalf on 5 May 1817, this would also allow services to

continue in the nave while construction of the new church was

underway: Elgin's representatives worked hard to ensure that

Michael A. Penman IRSS 34 (2009) 11

those heritors who favoured repairs only to the nave remained

in the minority.

At the same time, though, Elgin's celebrated experiences in

Greece and his controversial extraction, recording, preserva-

tion and display of the Parthenon's frieze (1802-3) may have

caused him to act at Dunfermline in a civic antiquarian

capacity. By the standards applied to other Scottish Gothic

church reconstructions of the early nineteenth century, the

erection of a new choir would in effect restore Dunfermline

abbey church to something of its former glory and aid the

preservation of the high-status graves located in 1766 and 1807

or otherwise known to be scattered there.

Such a public sense

of protecting historical interests would have reflected the

growing awareness of national heritage in govern ment and

intellectual circles. Elgin's family had already undertaken such

a duty in 1771 – in which year both Earl Thomas's father and

elder brother had died - by protecting the accidentally redis-

covered remains of an elite medieval female thought at the

time to be Robert I's queen, Elizabeth de Burgh (d. 1327): in

1818, when this female grave was once again disturbed by the

building works, Elgin would have the body re-interred in his

family vault.

Alternatively, by Spring 1817 – by which time Elgin had

engaged Edinburgh architect-to-the-gentry, William Burn

(1789-1870), to draw up plans for a new Dunfermline abbey

church – the earl may also have placed hopes upon the prece-

dent of government financial assistance for the preservation

of important antiquities, following the (acrimonious) state

purchase in June 1816 of the Part henon marbles for the British

Museum.

However, Elgin's own debts remained crippling

(£100,000 plus) as were those of the burgh itself by 1818

(between £16,000 and £20,000), and the earl and the other

Dunfermline heritors had already appealed to the House of

Lords in 1812 to p rove that their liabilities stretched only so far

towards new pew or manse provision in what was an ancient

royal seat.

The Tory administration of Lord Liverpool was

besides committed to state sponsored church extension

as a means of strengthening Protestant nationhood in the

face of rising evangelical dissent and associated radicalism

in expanding urban parishes: in March 1818 a £1 m illion

commission to fund Church of England and Ireland extension

would be followed in May that year by a counterpart Church

12 Robert Bruce's Bones

of Scotland Accommodation Committee.

It followed that

by 1820, the year before the completion of the new church

in Dunfermline, Elgin and the other heritors were organised to

the point of sending a memorial to the Lords Baron of

Exchequer of Scotland in Edinburgh requesting an additional

pecuniary grant from the Public Fund 'to relieve the heritors

from the Great Expense of the new Church which has been

increased by national considerations [my italics, i.e. the discovery

of royal remains]': they thus presumably sought a sum over

and above the agreed four-fifths state funding of the final

estimated £8,300 cost of the church.

Then, in 1822, Elgin

would draw up another memorial to the Lords Baron of

Exchequer about the general principle of allowances from

government for repairs to ancient buildings.

Yet at the same time, it may have been anticipated that an

impressive new church could accommodate a re-ordered

Bruce-Elgin family vault. In this regard, Earl Thomas would

understandably have been drawn by a poignant desire to re-

present the ornate monument of his beloved infant son,

William (d. 1805), over whose burial at Dunfermline Abbey

he had encountered difficulties.

More generally, Elgin's

family vault as a whole would be re-housed within the

northern transept of the new church beneath the old choir

space which the early antiquarian surveys had identified as the

likely site of six high-status slab tomb graves.

As a living

descendant of King Robert Bruce, too, Elgin may have had

powerful dynastic yearnings for the re-presentation of the

abbey. Nonetheless, Elgin's wish to be involved with the new

parish church at Dunfermline may also have reflected his

hopes of spiritual renewal and a wish to rehabilitate his own

public person and political career, following his notorious

divorce (1807-8). The latter had been hard-fought through

Parliament and both the London and Edinburgh courts, and

during his awkward and ongoing parole from French arrest.

Elgin's reputation had also suffered cruelly at the pens of

reviewers and authors, such as Lord Byron, who pilloried his

physical condition and his treatment of the Greeks in their

hour of national self-determination.

A number of Elgin's motives may thus only have been

intensified by the discovery of a likely royal burial in February

1818. However, tensions seem to have arisen between Elgin

and some of his fellow churchgoers long before ground

Michael A. Penman IRSS 34 (2009) 13

was broken on the new building. It is clear that a majority of

the heritors, elders and the first and second ministers of

Dunfermline were prepared to undertake the 'raising' and

'removal' of any royal remains found in the area of the choir:

in early 1818 the Dunfermline presbytery had petitioned both

the Westminster office of the King's Remembrancer and the

Barons of Exchequer of Scotland for permission to do so

and to deposit these relics with 'the greatest possible decency

and respect' next to the marble base of the feretory tomb of

St Margaret in the eastern churchyard.

But the discovery of

what were immediately assumed to be Robert Bruce's grave

and bones on 17 February 1818 complicated matters and

further divided the interested parties.

That the grave and bones which were disturbed seemed to

lie exactly before the high altar of the former Abbey choir was

immediately taken as one of several 'sure tokens' which

pointed to the identity of the occupant as Robert Bruce.

The

location of the king's tomb seemed to be readily confirmed by

medieval chroniclers – published in the eighteenth century –

which reported his burial 'in medio choiri' [plate 1]. The first

witnesses and early inspections also asserted the presence of a

crude lead coronet around the skull of the skeleton in the

tomb, as well as a deteriorating shroud of cloth of gold, and

the corpse's conspicuously split sternum to permit heart

removal, a request by Bruce again confirmed by chroniclers.

Finally, in the debris field around the grave, fragments of a

monumental tomb were found which were linked to the king's

recorded funerary purchases of a marble sarcophagus.

There

was thus understandably immediate general consensus that

these were the Bruce king's remains despite the absence of any

more definitive proof.

Indeed, by late February-early March of 1818 Dunfermline

Presbytery was attempting to deal with the consequences of

the Exchequers' new objection to the exhumation and

removal of any further remains found in the Abbey choir. The

Lords Baron now sent detailed orders from Edinburgh about

the re-covering with chained stone and clay and the provision

of security for what was already styled as 'Bruce's tomb', until

it could be properly inspected by the King's Remembrancer's

office and other suitably qualified officials. Again, there may

have been a predictable anxiety in Dunfermline to defray any

extra expenditure such initial measures would add (c.£234) to

14 Robert Bruce's Bones

the cost of the new church.

Yet questions were now clearly

also being asked about the best way to proceed in the wake of

the discovery.

On 1 March 1818 Elgin wrote to the Tory Home Secretary,

Viscount Sidmouth (1757-1844, former Prime Minster Henry

Addington), recommending the suspension of work on the

foundations of the new church until a fuller investigation and

reporting could take place, lest further royal remains be

disturbed or overlooked.

Elgin, of course, had gained unique

experience of excavating historical remains and of recording

them for posterity. But at this juncture, it is very tempting

to speculate that the issue had also become a matter of

personal and political differences within both the local (Fife)

and national establishments. For by 5 March, Sidmouth -

after consultation with Robert Dundas, Viscount Melville

(1771-1851) – had referred the matter to the Lord Chief

Commissioner of the new Jury Court for Scotland (established

in 1815), Elgin's neighbour in Fife, William Adam of Blair

Adam (1751-1839).

The 'Blair Adam Club', the Edinburgh Elite and the

Discovery

William Adam was a lawyer and moderate Whig, a member of

the Adam architect dynasty, a former M.P. for both Kinross

and Kincardine and life-Lord Lieutenant of Kinross who had

also served ably as a political manager for Grenville's Ministry

of All the Talents (1806-7), defending Tory Lord Melville

(senior) against impeachment in 1806 and aiding the Crown

through the regency financial crisis of 1810-11. His elevation as

Lord Chief Commissioner by the Tory Liverpool administra-

tion was a non-partisan appointment. Crucially, though, Adam

was also a Baron of the Exchequer as well as a heritor of

Dunfermline parish (for the farmlands of Roscobie, Kingseat

of Outh, Bowleys and Craigencat

) . This was a potential

conflict of interests, perhaps, to modern eyes: Adam had, for

example, already inspected the choir ruins on behalf of the

Exchequer before the discovery and approved of rival estimates

for both nave and choir work to aid the divided heritors in

their decisions in 1817-8.

Intellectually, however, Adam was inclined to take a genuine

antiquarian interest in the discovery of Bruce's remains. But

his position may have allowed him and others - surely quite

Michael A. Penman IRSS 34 (2009) 15

consciously - to begin to make the custody, treatment and

commemoration of the grave and bones essentially the

preserve of an establishment group drawn from their own

close professional and cultural circle. This was thus a network,

too, which reflected the dominant historiographical and political

consensus of late eighteenth-early nineteenth century Scotland:

that Scotland's past – while romantic and highlighted by noble

sentiments and heroic individuals in defence of liberty - had

otherwise been violent, constitutionally under-developed,

economically backward and oppressed by feudal law and

hereditary privilege. This historical interpretation of Scotland

was inherited and accepted from the university teachings,

writings and personal relationships of philosophical historians,

lawyers, political economists or moderate churchmen, from

David Hume (1711-76) and Adam Ferguson (1723-1816) to

Dugald Stewart (1753-1823) and other Enlightenment authorities.

It was an orthodoxy which thus enshrined the vital impor-

tance of Scotland's full Parliamentary Union with England and

the resulting post-1707 political, legal and economic inte -

gration and reforms as the root of later eighteenth century

improvement and prosperity.

Yet at the same time, as Colin Kidd has suggested, this was a

received identity subject to increasing tension and in transition.

In the wake of the American and French Revolutions and the

upheavals of the long Napoleonic Wars, Conservative and

moderate Whig elements in Scotland and the wider British

Isles shared a growing sense in the early nineteenth century

that enlightened liberal reform could go too far, too fast: there

was therefore an establishment reaction to defend the status

quo of privilege and interest and with it an almost contradic-

tory ethos of protecting and celebrating features and icons of

the 'ancient' Scottish past and constitution (in particular its

military 'tradition'). The dominant ideology of the day thus

rested upon the commitment of the establishment to project a

distinct Scottish identity blended with a strong contribution

within the wider British Union and growing Empire: this was a

position which hardened as calls for electoral and local

government reform from the urban middle and working

classes intensified after 1815.

The leading role of Adam and his fellow advocates in

Anglophile reform of the Court of Session in Edinburgh testified

to this pervasive political and cultural ideology, as did Adam's

16 Robert Bruce's Bones

leisure activities.

For within this context, from 1816, Blair Adam

house, a few miles north-east of Dunfermline on the road to

Kinross, hosted a club of nine worthies and Adam kinfolk,

including advocate-author Walter Scott (1771-1832), all dedi-

cated to Scottish history and antiquities and who made trips

each June to sites of interest.

Their historical visits in this

period included Castle Campbell, Culross Abbey, Falkland

Palace, St Andrews and the site of the murder of Archbishop

Sharp (1679), as well as a number of ruins closer to Blair

Adam. William Adam later recorded that their visits to highly

picturesque Lochleven castle, site of Mary Queen of Scots'

captivity and escape, inspired Scott's penning of The Abbot and

The Monastery, published in 1820.

As we shall see, the redis-

covery of both the royal regalia and 'Bruce's bones' in 1818,

also clearly influenced the completion of other Scott texts at

this time. But in their memoirs both Adam and Scott (as well

as Scott's biographer and son-in-law, John Lockhart) asserted

that the group had also visited Dunfermline and its 'renowned

royal cemetery', although the year of their trip there cannot be

exactly pinpointed from extant records: however, circumstan-

tial evidence touched on below suggests it must have been

sometime between 1819 and 1822.

At the time of the events at Dunfermline, then, Adam's

club included: Walter Scott, as the Principal clerk of the Court

of Session and the suspected Waverley author; Charles Adam

(1780-1853), William's son, captain of the royal yacht 1815-25

and a future Admiral

; Captain (later Sir) Adam Ferguson

(1771-1855), Scott's particular friend and son of the afore -

mentioned history Professor Adam Ferguson of Edinburgh

University who had been a pro-Hanoverian Whig and scholar

of classical republicanism who rejoiced in the French Revolution

(until it was corrupted) but was opposed to British electoral

radicalism

; Englishman Sir Samuel Shepherd (1760-1840),

the Attorney General appointed by Lord Liverpool in 1817

;

William Clerk (d.1847), Principal clerk of Adam's Jury Court,

himself a Whig but also grandson of Tory politician and

antiquary Sir John Clerk of Penicuik (d.1755) and thus brother

of John Clerk, the future Lord Eldin (1757-1832) who had

married an Adam, was a former Solicitor General of Scotland

and a Whig judge during the calamitous 'State Trials' for sedition

of 1817 (overseen by Lord Sidmouth)

; Thomas Thomson

(1768-1852), the first Deputy Clerk Register of Scotland, editor

Michael A. Penman IRSS 34 (2009) 17

of recent editions of the Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland and

the Regesta Magnum Scottorum (the Register of the Great Seal of

the Kings of Scotland), both published in 1814, and who also

served as a Deputy King's Remembrancer in Exchequer

;

Thomson's brother, the Reverend John Thomson (1778-1840),

a landscape painter and minister of Duddingston parish in

Edinburgh

; and lastly their cousin, William Adam's son-

in-law, Anstruther Thomson of Charleton in north-east Fife.

These men – and many of the extra guests whom Adam

invited on their June trips, including portraitist Henry Raeburn –

did not necessarily share a common Tory or Whig political

outlook on matters of electoral and legal reform. But many of

them can also be associated through close networks of

schooling (e.g. Edinburgh's Royal High School), University

education (Edinburgh and Oxford) and club membership (the

Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Society of Antiquaries of

Scotland, or, from 1833, the Bannatyne Club which edited

historical manuscripts) as well as through their Edinburgh

New Town house addresses, common interests in agricultural

improvement and through their religion.

However, to what degree Adam or others in this mid-

summer history club-cum-talking shop may have felt and

acted upon a personal or political antipathy towards high-

Tory, Thomas, earl of Elgin, is not certain. Adam was certainly

a boyhood friend and political ally of the man whom Elgin

successfully sued in 1807-8 for adultery with his wife, geologist

and Whig anti-monarchical M.P. for Kirkcaldy, Robert

Ferguson of Raith (1767-1840), lands a few miles to the east of

Broomhall and Dunfermline.

More generally, Walter Scott

may have expressed a view of Elgin shared by many when he

recorded in his diary on 4 March 1818 that in Edinb urgh he had

encountered the earl, with whom he was 'very little

acquainted', all excited 'about some business about the

Bruce's tomb…I could not help laughing at the circumstance

when he was gone, I do not at all grudge the humorous

chastisement he has received.'

For his part, Elgin certainly expressed his surprise at 'the

determination' of Adam as Chief Commissioner to proceed

with the Dunfermline building work before a proper survey

could be undertaken: the earl sought further assurances from

Sidmouth and from 10 March 1818 tried to rally the parish

heritors to challenge the decision. But by 20 March he had

18 Robert Bruce's Bones

been out-voted and the work was to 'continue uninter-

rupted.'

If Elgin did thereafter withdraw his involvement this

would have been in step with his similar desire 'never again to

take any concern in the business of our late meetings'

following a dispute with Adam as Chief Commissioner over

the allocation of 'Rogue Money', Fife County funds allocated

to pay for constables to police rising numbers of vagrants.

Crucially, this local government squabble also came to a head

in February-March 1818.

Traditional rivalries between these

neighbours may also have been re-ignited by the general

election of 15 June-25 July 1818, with the Tories retaining

control of the notorious Stirling Burghs district seat which

included Dunfermline.

Strong divisions may thus have widened within a matter of

days of the discovery of the bones. It is striking that at the

ceremonial laying of the foundation stone of the new parish

church at Dunfermline on 10 March 1818, Elgin's presence as

chief heritor dominated proceedings alongside that of the Tory

mercantile and familial oligarchy of the Beveridge-Wilson

party on Dunfermline's burgh Council. No newspaper reports

mentioned the attendance of other substantial heritors or local

landowners (such as Adam), leaving the distinct impression

that at least some of Elgin's concern in writing to Sidmouth

earlier in the month following the discovery of 'Bruce's tomb'

may have been motivated by concern at having his thunder

stolen at the already planned foundation event. On the day,

Elgin led a Masonic march with Major David Wilson,

Dunfermline's Provost since 1808, through the church

grounds and burgh behind Elgin's ancestral relics from

Broomhall house, the sword and helmet of King Robert. The

newspaper coverage also emphasised that Robert Burns' 'Scots

wha hae wi' Wallace bled ' (1794, formal title 'Robert Bruce's

Address to His Troops at Bannockburn' ) was several times sung

with spontaneous enthusiasm by the huge attendant crowd of

townsmen and visitors, reportedly 8,000 to 10,000 strong! This

seems to have been a genuinely popular community event.

Yet when Bruce's remains were finally officially inspected

and ceremonially re-interred on 5 November 1819, a remark-

able 21 months after their discovery, Elgin and his ancestral

helmet and sword were conspicuously absent and the reburial

would have a highly select attendance upon a far more

restrained affair.

Although Elgin and his household spent a

Michael A. Penman IRSS 34 (2009) 19

lot of time in more affordable lodgings in Paris c.1817-c.1821

the earl would surely have desired to oversee the re-interment

of his royal ancestor.

Indeed, as early as the very evening

of 10 March 1818 Elgin had been reported as agreeing

with other aristocratic members of the Caledonian Hunt in

Edinburgh to subscribe a guinea each to erect a 'national [my

italics] monument to the memory of Robert Bruce…being

moreover convinced that the feelings with which they are

activated are universal throughout the country.'

But Elgin's

family would not in the end fulfil this role until their gift in

1889 of the brass effigy currently still in place over Bruce's

tomb in Dunfermline abbey church.

In 1818-9, then, Elgin

had seemingly been alienated or distanced from a role in the

reburial of his illustrious ancestor in the weeks and months

after the discovery of the grave and bones.

As a result, the fate of Bruce's remains became heavily

influenced by the dynamic and tight-knit layers of interest,

patronage, friendship, enlightened cultural interaction and

growing debate over political reform which underpinned

William Adam's world. On 4 March 1818, Lord Sidmouth

had stressed his full satisfaction in Adam's ability to handle

the matter of Bruce's bones and expressed his own and

Lord Melville's delight at the thought of Walter Scott (whose

baronetcy Adam would solicit in earnest from the Crown

between 1818 and 1822) heading for Dunfermline at news

of the find and 'under the irresistible attraction of the body

of Robert Bruce.'

Adam confirmed in reply, however, that

the new building work would not be stopped, as Elgin had

asked, but that a thorough search for further remains would be

made and the walls would be extended to embrace all choir

graves uncovered.

Adam thus presumably had a prominent

role in the design of instructions issued to the Deputy King's

Remembrancer in Exchequer, one Henry Jardine of Harwood

in East Lothian (1766-1851), the official charged with over-

seeing the security and inspection of the choir tomb on 'Lord

Elgin's ground' through the offices of Burn the architect,

Alexander Colville the sheriff substitute of Fife and other local

dignitaries. Jardine, who had inspected the choir site with

Adam on 14 February, made a second exploratory visit and

inspection of the grave site some time in March 1818.

Jardine himself was clearly ambitious, impressing Walter

Scott as 'a vain man and a jobber' who 'has the advantage

20 Robert Bruce's Bones

of the Caledonian Boar in as much as he always poaches

somewhat by getting some little management or other in any

scheme that may be going for Public good, and for which

management he may decently handle a trifle of cash…'

(although he and Scott did later become friends through

literary dinners).

But in 1818 Jardine may have been inspired

to seek a conspicuous public role in the custody and

commemoration of Bruce's tomb for both intellectual and

professional reasons.

As a prominent member and officer of the Society of

Antiquaries of Scotland (which had been tentatively instituted

in 1780), alongside Scott and others (including Rvd John

Dalyell who had investigated the Dunfermline choir graves in

1807), Jardine was undeniably drawn to historical inquiry. He

would submit a first written report of the November 1819

inspection and re-interment of Bruce's body to the SAS in

May 1820, which was in turn expanded and published in book

form in Edinburgh in 1821, then delivered to the Antiquaries

as an abridged paper in December that year and finally

reproduced in the Society's Transactions in 1822: both printed

versions would contain illustrations and appendices of phreno-

logical assessment of Bruce's skull, reflecting the growing

popularity of that pseudo-science, discussed below [plate 2].

But a letter of 9 May 1819 makes it plain that Jardine was also

anxious to secure promotion to the full post of King's

Remembrancer, soliciting William Adam's support against the

rival advancement of the son-in-law of Chief Baron Dundas:

Jardine would receive the post in 1820 and be knighted in

1825.

But perhaps more significantly, Jardine may have been

influenced by observing the close control and presentation

of that other celebrated and contemporary antiquarian

rediscovery: that of the royal regalia of Scotland's monarchy

in Edinburgh Castle's Crown room on 4 February 1818, a

mere fortnight before the workmen stumbled upon 'Bruce's

tomb' at Dunfermline abbey. The regalia recovery was

an event carefully stage-managed by Walter Scott, Adam

and other establishment figures sympathetic to the Regency

Govern ment and acting with the blessing of the Prince of

Wales. Indeed, this group had worked hard to persuade

London and the Crown that such an event could not be turned

to Anglophobic, anti-Union ends.

Michael A. Penman IRSS 34 (2009) 21

The great and the good chosen to be present at the

recovery of the ancient crown, sceptre and sword of the kings

of Scots included: four Blair Adam club members, namely

Scott, Adam, William Clerk and Thomas Thomson; Henry

Jardine; Lord Melville as Keeper of the Privy Seal, along with

his cousin Robert Dundas of Arniston, then Lord Chief Baron

of the Exchequer of Scotland; and the Dukes of Buccleuch and

Gordon (keeper of the Great Seal). Once dusted off, the

regalia went on display in Edinburgh Castle under the guard

of a handsomely salaried and residential Deputy-Keeper. By

December 1818 this officer was none other than Captain

Adam Ferguson, Scott's great friend and another member of

the 'Blair Adam Antiquarian Club.' Crucially, the regalia

admission price of one shilling (£7 to £8 per person in

modern money) and a limit of 150 people a day ensured that

the 29,000 visitors recorded by the time of George IV's short

residence at Edinburgh and his use of the regalia in 1822 were

drawn predominantly from the upper or middle and leisured

classes at a time, of course, of fluctuating social and political

unrest. Patriotic regalia prints were also distributed for sale

(based on a sketch by Andrew Geddes later etched by David

Wilkie) and a commemorative volume with plates commis-

sioned.

Scott also intended to publish a history of the regalia:

this would undoubtedly have been a volume which – like his

other publications of these years, The Heart of Midlothian

(1818), Ivanhoe (1819), The Bride of Lammermoor and Legend of

Montrose (1819) – sought to present Scotland's past as distant,

romantic and no danger to England and Union.

The emerging regalia treatment must then have been the

most immediate model of historical commemoration which

the circle of Melville, Adam, Scott and Jardine had in mind

in turning to deal simultaneously with the remains of

Robert Bruce. But if this was the case, then the actions of the

Edinburgh advocate, Exchequer and antiquary fraternity

in handling the regalia arguably spoke to wider social and

political concerns. Thus their response to the discovery

at Dunfermline also surely reflected these issues of order,

authority and propriety rather than any awkwardness

at association with the earl of Elgin. Predictably, indeed,

the paramount concern of the Scottish establishment must

have been that the remains of this king, the hero of wars

against royal England and famed as ruler of Scotland as an

22 Robert Bruce's Bones

inde pendent kingdom, might become associated with violent

agitation, or anti-Union and anti-Hanoverian sentiment, or

worse, lingering Jacobitism and other forms of radical dissent.

Yet at the same time, the sympathies of Whigs like Adam and

Clerk for calls for moderate political reform must have been

sorely tested.

Michael A. Penman IRSS 34 (2009) 23

Plate 1: conjectural ground plan of Dunfermline's late medieval abbey

from Henry Jardine's report as Deputy King's Remembrancer (1821); n.b. tomb

'L' positioned 'in medio choiri'. I am grateful to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland

for permission to reproduce this image.

24 Robert Bruce's Bones

Plate 3: Sir Joseph Noël Paton's unfulfilled design for a monumental

memorial over 'Bruce's tomb' in Dunfermline completed Abbey

Church, c.1845. I am grateful to the National Galleries of Scotland

for permission to reproduce this image [NGS D 4252/17].

Plate 2: the lead-covered skeleton and a close-up of the skull of '

King Robert' from Jardine's report (1821) detailing the inspection

and re-interment of 5 November 1819. I am grateful to the Society

of Antiquaries of Scotland for permission to reproduce this image.

Radicalism and the Press in Dunfermline and Scotland

Any stirring fears within the Edinburgh elite might have

seemed to be confirmed upon reading the newspaper reports

of the laying of the new church foundation stone at Dunfermline

on 10 March 1818. The vast crowd and its repeated singing of

'Scots Wha Hae' above all lent the proceedings something of

the air of a burgh or parliamentary electoral reform rally (or,

later in the century, a Home Rule meeting).

Dunfermline's

socio-economic mix certainly placed it within the group of

middling mercantile/professional, but also increasingly indus-

trialised, burghs most likely to host such an event. The burgh

had a strong tradition of dissenting religion with the first

Statistical Account recording over 4,600 'seceders' in eight

congregations in the 1790s.

More importantly, by the early

nineteenth century the burgh was home to up to 1,000 specialist

(table-linen) weavers out of a growing population of about

11,600, thus making it quite similar to that other seat of emerg -

ing working-class political agitation, Paisley (where a sheriff

gaoled a band in 1818 for merely playing 'Scots Wha Hae' ).

Dunfermline's hinterland also provided extensive colliery and

lime-production employment under the control of both the

earl of Elgin and the Burgh Council and all these industries

and local agriculture were suffering badly from the intensi-

fying depression (c.1815-22) of wages and prices after the end

of the Napoleonic wars following the slump in economic

demand and the demobilisation of 'national regiments' and

the navy.

Agitating collier associations in nearby Falkirk had

raised a stone to William Wallace in 1810.

In this context, the invocation of Wallace's – and by associ-

ation Bruce's – name through Robert Burns' song might

indeed have appealed to the growing numbers of manu -

facturing and trade guild members of Dunfermline, many

of them from the Dissenting churches. The two heroes of

the Wars might have been deployed as talismans in calls for

the reform of the corrupt graft, indebtedness and electoral

stranglehold of the self-electing mercantile burgh Council and

its officers, headed by Tory Provost Wilson, the Beveridges,

their kin and allied non-residents. Admittedly, the same histor-

ical figures and song would also have formed a strong part of

the political, Presbyterian and Scots-within-Union loyalist

identity of Major Wilson and his party as they looked to

preserve their hold on power, salaries and burgh property and

Michael A. Penman IRSS 34 (2009) 25

to curry favour from the Crown and the Tory administration in

Edinburgh and London. But in March 1818 such a rep orted

atmosphere at a public gathering could all too easily have

caused the minds of government supporters and officials to

link any signs of radicalism in the Dunfermline of the past and

present with the wider fears of revolution and the mob

swelling at that time throughout the British Isles.

Apart from being the birthplace of Charles I, Dunfermline

had been among those burghs which had petitioned against

the parliamentary union of 1706-7. But much of its reputation

was coloured by its inclusion in the infamous Stirling burghs

district seat at Westminster. In the later eighteenth century,

Dunfermline had been the scene of electoral rioting (1784,

with one weaver gaoled for his violence) and – in the years

after the French Revolution - the Friends of the People had

been well established in the district.

During concerted if

unsuccessful efforts for burgh reform c.1782-c.1794 Dunfermline

burgesses had added a considerable chorus to the 'substance of

grievances' gathered to present to Parliament to denounce

royal burgh self-election of councils, abuse of burgh revenues,

burgh debts and the cronied 'jobbing' of public works.

Most

high profile of all, however, was the conviction and transporta-

tion of two of Dunfermline's weavers in 1797 for aiding the

United Scotsmen in organising and fermenting revolutionary

intent through a local branch of that association.

These were relatively fragmented signs of agitation, but by

1818 – a year after high p rofile sedition trials in Edinburgh -

there was resolute opposition to the Wilson-Beveridge mercan-

tile oligarchy which had dominated Dunfermline Council

since the late 1790s: the burgh was reported as the scene in

1817 and 1818 of radical meetings of hundreds of workers, just

as such gatherings were held in a number of other industrial

towns throughout Lowland Scotland with increasing regularity

and attendance.

Although the Whig Edinburgh Review had not made a

connection between the Bruce bones discovery, 'liberty' and

calls for reform in 1818-19, as early as 18 March 1818 the

radical London publication, the Black Dwarf, had picked up on

general newspaper coverage of the bones and featured

a parody of Robert Burns' 'Scots Wha Hae' to denounce

the Home Secretary: 'Sidmouth! Chains and Slavery!'

Establishment figures might have been all the more alarmed if

26 Robert Bruce's Bones

such radical papers had made use, too, of Robert Burns' two

other post-French Revolution verses of 1793, then published

anonymously in the Edinburgh Gazetteer, both entitled 'The

Ghost of Bruce' and both with obviously republican and

contemporary intent. These poems clearly drew on Burns'

own pilgrimages of 1787 to Dunfermline, where he is said to

have knelt to kiss the largest tomb slab recently uncovered,

believed locally to be that of Bruce, and to Bannockburn

where he had himself pseudo-knighted while wearing the relic

of Bruce's helmet. Burns' two poems - just like 'Scots Wha

Hae'/'Robert Bruce's Address to His Troops at Bannockburn' (1794)

– also quote from William Hamilton of Gilbertfield's 1722

edition of Blind Hary's medieval epic poem about William

Wallace, The Wallace. Thus in Burns' earlier verses a troubled

Scottish patriot walking Bannockburn at night is visited by the

dead king's spectre who warns – in words which might have

seemed all the more potent in 1818 – that:

The shade of Bruce has silent kept the tomb,

But rest no longer can his Spirit have:

His country is in danger; chains anew

Are forging fast t'enslave his Native Land…

…the Shade of Bruce

Is risen to protect her injur'd Rights;-

To reinstate in splendour, as before,

Her Liberty near lost...

The second poem of 1793 also denounced what 'Our Country

has endur'd from P[it]t, D[undas],/And all their Pension'd

Slaves.'

Then in April 1818 the Black Dwarf continued by denounc -

ing those 'nests of inveterate despotism, the Royal Burghs of

Scotland': Dunfermline, indeed, grouped within the Stirling

Burghs, and thus part of the most infamously corrupt seat

in Scotland, had seen Sir John Henderson, admittedly an

ally of William Adam, reportedly expending some £100,000

in bribes in 1802 in his attempts to secure delegates' nomi -

nation.

Such a reform publication as the Black Dwarf

was usually most popular among the urban workforces of

Glasgow, Paisley and their surrounding industrial towns, or

Dundee and its hinterland. But that the government and its

officers and supporters did feel threatened by its spread to

Michael A. Penman IRSS 34 (2009) 27

eastern Scotland might seem to be confirmed by the counter-

part loyalist manner in which the memories of Bruce and the

other discovery of 1818, the royal regalia, were deployed by

such monthly Edinburgh Tory publications as Blackwood's

Magazine.

In March 1818, Blackwood's printed a poem celebrating the

crown, sceptre and sword as 'worn in triumph by the mighty

Bruce … [now] twin witnesses of Scotland's shame [reformist

agitation].' In December 1819 Blackwood's would report on the

reburial of the king's remains and emphasise Bruce's (and

Wallace's) achievement in keeping Scotland and England

separate until the former could enjoy 'the blessings which she

has since received by a union, on equal terms' in 1603/1707

and after her own Presbyterian reformation: this was a classic

statement of the preconditions for the confident 'unionist

nationalism' of the mid-nineteenth century, recently surveyed

by Graeme Morton.

However, by November 1819, wider events had inevitably

had a further impact on attitudes to Dunfermline and its royal

remains. 4 June 1819 had seen a traditional loyalist but

nonetheless surely unsettling riot occur in Perth to mark the

King's birthday.

But it was, of course, the Peterloo massacre

in August 1819 which set off alarms and the raising of militia

by local gentry and magistrates across the length and breadth

of the British Isles. In May 1819, though, and perhaps of more

immediate import for Dunfermline, Whig M.P. Lord Archibald

Hamilton had also secured a Parliamentary inquiry into burgh

electoral and financial practices in response to numerous

petitions and reform debate in both Westminster Houses.

Crucially, the evidence gathered for this Westminster

inquiry throughout the summer of 1819 foc ussed on the

burghs of Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee and Dunfermline. In

July 1819, indeed, several members of the manufacturers'

guild of Dunfermline testified convincingly about the corrupt

self-election, nepotism, intimidation of opponents and spoliation

of council lands, leases and income practised by Provost

Wilson and his party, a number of whom (including Wilson)

were also criticised for their ties to Edinburgh governmental

and Bank of Scotland interests. These witnesses also provided

documentary proof that their guild was unable to appoint its

own Dean of Trades and that the burgh's debt was far higher

than the figure reported by Wilson: it was more like £20,000

28 Robert Bruce's Bones

than £16,000, with income only about £1,500 per annum, the

accounts un-audited for four years and never made accessible

to other magistrates (and the additional £2,000 share of the

new church to be paid by the burgh not included).

Thus as this evidence was transcribed, and repercussions

anticipated, it is likely that the Liverpool administration and its

ministers in Scotland became anxious to ensure that Wilson

and his fellow magistrates did not provide the outspoken

Whigs (who had made no gains in Scotland in the 1818

general election) and more radical agitators with further

ammunition for their cause. However, the Inquiry may also

have been the occasion of a definite divergence of sympathies

on the part of Lord Chief Commissioner Adam (who had

recently clashed with Elgin and the Fife County Council over

finance) and other Whigs supportive of Lord Archibald

Hamilton's findings and wider aims of moderate reform: these

differences would then be played out in the com memoration

of Bruce in the burgh. It is tempting, indeed, to speculate that

the main reason for Adam's abortion of visits to Dunfermline

mooted in summer 1819, possibly as part of a Blair Adam

Antiquarian Club outing, was the emerging political ten sion

within the wider Edinburgh advocates' fraternity and thus a

desire to avoid coinciding with the Hamilton inquiry's

Dunfermline testimony from 7-9 July or the burgh Council

elections of September.

Hamilton's report was printed on 12

July 1819 and demonstrated all four ancient royal seats

surveyed to be bankrupt: this news broke publicly in September

(although it did not prevent the re-election of Wilson and co.).

Moreover, when the bones' re-interment finally occurred on

5 November 1819, as we shall see, Adam would not be in

attendance and Wilson would later be at pains to reassure him

that his fellow heritors had not expressed public disapproval at

this snub.

That the establishment was therefore unsettled, concerned

and even divided by the potential situation in Dunfermline,

and the burgh's place within the wider national scene – and

thus by association with Bruce's bones – is confirmed by the

Fife County meeting held at Cupar on 18 November 1819, just

a fortnight after the eventual re-interment ceremony.

This

assembly took place in a state of considerable ferment, with

a majority decrying the recent reported appearance of copies

of the Black Dwarf in the possession of working men in

Michael A. Penman IRSS 34 (2009) 29

Dunfermline alongside such works as Thomas Paine's Age of

Reason (1795); the County meeting was reminded, too, of the

proximity of the less-skilled weaving populace of adjacent

burghs like Kirkcaldy where a large radical meeting had also

been held in October 1819, echoing fears of riots which had

marked similar gatherings at Paisley and Glasgow in August-

September.

The Fife establishment gathering thus closed

with resolutions to offer relief to the distressed weavers of

Dunfermline (who were reported as 'quiet' and more church-

going than the norm) and to send a statement of loyalty to the

Prince Regent.

In reply, the Black Dwarf again parodied Robert I's invoca-

tion by such an assembly, poking fun at Fife's titled elite and

propertied electorate fretting over the publication's pages 'in

some Radical's pocket, cheek by jowl with the remains of

Robert the Bruce, and the patriotic body that visited the tomb'

(seemingly a reference to the pieces of Bruce's bones stolen

at the re-interment ceremony, discussed below).

Yet such

satire and further reports of ongoing reform meetings held

throughout Scotland and in England in the months after

Peterloo would only seem to have heightened the sense of

danger shared by the authorities. In October 1819, Captain John

Christie of the Fife militia had written to Westminster from

Kinross arguing that the 'agitation prevailing in Scotland'

warranted the prompt instalment of his militia's arms within

better fortifications.

He was just one voice among many

crying alarm. Advocates like Adam, Scott, William Clerk and

(on Sidmouth's orders) Samuel Shepherd – of both Whig and

Tory persuasion - would be at the very heart of the Scottish

legal system and local militias which would act to punish

the perpetrators and press of the abortive 'Radical War' in

Scotland of 1820. In this context, then, the tensions of 1818-19

must have had a sustained momentum and a sense of far

greater threat and potential to force reform (for those who

were Whig) or provoke violent revolt (for those who were

Tory) than in neighbouring England.

Hindsight, too, would seem to further confirm some of

these fears and their momentary focus on Dunfermline as

justified. In 1822 (at the time of George IV's state visit to

Edinburgh), Dunfermline was the scene of a nine month

strike by weavers whose numbers had swollen but wages

fallen following changes in loom technology: this dispute was

30 Robert Bruce's Bones

eventually won by the employers. But by 1832-3 (with the

Wilson-Beveridge party now broken) Dunfermline Council

would join a number of other prominent municipal magistracies

supporting burgh and parliamentary electoral reform acts; by

the late 1830s Dunfermline's manufacturing population would

also be heavily involved in Chartism.

The Re-interment of Bruce's Bones, November 1819

The convergence of local and national events about Dunfermline

in 1818-19 thus surely helps explain why Bruce's re-interment

in November 1819 was in the end delayed and designed to be

dominated by an even more narrowly focussed establishment

circle of the Liverpool government's and Prince Regent's

supporters in Edinburgh and Fife anxious to protect the status

quo. However, a number of competing sympathies and voices

now conspired to give the proceedings a distinctly fragmented

and unfulfilled tone.

With both William Adam and Walter Scott reportedly too

unwell to attend, much of the final organisation had fallen to

the colourful senior figure of Adam's great personal friend, the

Edinburgh Professor of Medicine and His Majesty's first

Physician in Scotland, Dr James Gregory, F.R.S.E. (1753-

1821). Gregory was something of a maverick as a celebrated

Latinist, friend of Robert Burns and disputatious pamphleteer,

but opposed, like so many of his generation, to radical

reform.

In the summer of 1818 Gre gory and Adam had

corresponded about another unrealised plan to visit and

inspect Bruce's tomb, again perhaps as part of an intended

Blair Adam Antiquarian Club visit to the burgh and abbey:

Gregory lamented that he could not come away (after a

serious carriage accident) to join in paying respects to 'the

Magnanimous Hero of Bannockburn' and then get drunk with

Adam and visit a bawdy house! It is perhaps understandable

that Walter Scott may earlier have voiced fears that if he came to

the reburial he might be involved in distasteful 'tomfoolery.'

By late 1819, however, over-and-above political events,

there were a number of practical and moral issues further

delaying the inspection and reburial of the remains. Firstly, in

1818 the Barons of Exchequer and Dunfermline's heritors had

agreed that the walls of the new church building should have

been raised to such a height as to afford privacy and discretion

for this delicate operation: in the end at least seven feet, a

Michael A. Penman IRSS 34 (2009) 31

height reached just before the ruined walls and remaining

window tracery of the medieval choir were due to be removed

in November 1819.

It was clearly the authorities' collective

intention to keep the procedure as exclusive as had been, say,

the recovery of the royal regalia or – more appropriately –

the investigation of the tomb of Edward I carried out at

Westminster Abbey in 1774.

Besides, public and government

consciousness of the sensitivity of handling the remains of

dead kings may have been all the greater in 1818-19 given the

long illness of George III (in its final stage from 1810 with the

king passing away on 29 January 1820), the unpopularity and

chronic ailments of the Prince Regent, and the deaths of

Princess Charlotte in labour with a stillborn son on 5-6

November 1817 and then of her grandmother, Queen

Charlotte, on 17 November 1818: at that time there was also a

perceived need to reduce the expenditure of the Crown's civil

list.

But then the progress of the new walls themselves at

Dunfermline was impeded by repeated flooding to the

building site caused, according to architect William Burn, by

the excavation of a new vault in the south transept granted in

May 1818 to the earl of Elgin. The language of the heritors'

minutes suggests that Elgin had sent in his own labourers and

refused to effect repairs when requested throughout

December-January 1818-19, confirming local tensions behind

the scenes.

Little wonder, then, that when the re-interment of Bruce's

remains was finally undertaken on 5 November 1819 it aspired

to be as carefully choreographed an assertion of loyal, royal,

governmental, unionist and Presbyterian authority as had

been the handling of the regalia in 1818 and as would be

George IV's visit to Scotland under Walter Scott's design in

1822.

Even the date may have been selected for its signifi-

cance. Although no written evidence to this point from those

involved survives, the choice of Friday 5 November fell upon

the (until 1859) compulsory celebration of the failed Catholic

conspiracy of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 aimed at parliament

and regal union king, James VI and I (1567-1625), although

by the late eighteenth century overt anti-Catholic activities on

the day – such as the burning of the pope in effigy – had

decreased markedly. Crucially, however, church sermons

throughout Britain on 5 November would also typically have

commemorated that date as a 'double deliverance', falling as

32 Robert Bruce's Bones

it did on the anniversary of William of Orange's invasion

landing at Brixham in 1688 (with large contingents of Scottish

troops).

On this date in 1819, therefore, the Dunfermline reburial

was overseen not by Dunfermline's chief heritor, Lord Elgin,

or Scotland's Chief Commissioner, William Adam, but by

English Tory lawyer, Sir Samuel Shepherd, as the new Lord

Chief Baron of the Exchequer of Scotland (following the

death of Robert Dundas); he was joined by James Clerk

Rattray, Baron Clerk of the Exchequer and sheriff-depute of

Edinburgh (1763-1831); and Henry Jardine as Deputy

Remembrancer, along with Provost Wilson and the other

burgh magistrates.

100

Also in attendance were: Ranald George

MacDonald, a Surrey Tory M.P. and chief of Clanranald

(later remembered as an infamous Highland estate clearer)

101

;

Blair Adam club members William Clerk and Captain Adam

Ferguson, deputy keeper of the royal regalia (deputising for

William Adam and Walter Scott, respectively?); the sheriff

officers of Fife; and finally, the parish church ministers and

Dunfermline's eight dissenting clergy.

A new brick-lined grave had been prepared by William

Burn (also present) to receive the remains, but first the bones

were extracted from their original, deteriorating lead shroud

and wooden coffin, and inspected by Dr Gregory and his

colleague, Alexander Monro, F.R.S.E. (1773-1859), another

Royal High School and Edinburgh University graduate and

the third of his family to hold the post of Professor of Anatomy

in the capitol.

102

The bones were measured and drawn – with

particular note taken of an apparently healed wound to the left

jaw and cheek and of the sawn sternum permitting removal of

the heart after death; then a cast was taken of the detached

skull by artist William Scoular for phrenological purposes.

At this juncture, it may still have been the intention of the

select funerary dignitaries to conduct their business in private,

behind closed church doors, and to avoid any whiff of pseudo-

liturgy, although Gregory at least – in a letter to Adam - had

mentioned the possible admission of, as he put it, the 'mob'

through 'one door and out the other.'

103

The new lead coffin

for the remains was prepared with a lining of molten pitch into

which were inserted lead boxes containing a number of

published works deemed appropriate as commemorative articles:

a 1714 edition of Archdeacon John Barbour's medieval poem

Michael A. Penman IRSS 34 (2009) 33

The Bruce; Tory Lord Hailes' Annals of Scotland (1776); the

recent two volume History of the Reign of King Robert by Whig

pamphleteer Robert Kerr (1811); the Rvd John Fernie's

conventional History of Dunfermline (1815); and, significantly,

the Edinburgh Almanack and Edinburgh Directory for 1819, as well

as an unlisted 'variety of the Edinburgh Newspapers of the

day.'

104

These were followed by sixteen gold and silver coins

of the reign of George III in a copper box. Most of these

objects seem to have been selected (and some donated) by

Gregory – whose imagination was clearly taken up with

notion of a historical 'resurrection'

105

of Bruce – but with likely

input from Shepherd, Jardine and, perhaps, Adam. It was

Gregory who would be first to publish a lively narrative

account of the re-interment ceremony; he had also suggested a

skull cast and advised that Bruce's remains should be preserved

by submersion in five barrels (1,500 lbs) of hot poured pitch

within his new lead coffin.

106

However, before this last stage could be begun, according

to Jardine's report, 'in order to gratify the curiosity of an

immense crowd of people, who were assembled on the outside

of the [part-built, unroofed] church, the south and north doors

of the church were thrown open, and the people were allowed

to enter by the south door, passing along the side of the vault,

and retiring by the north; which they did in the most decent

and orderly manner.'

107

According to the press report of the

Edinburgh Caledonian Mercury, at this point the disjointed skull

was raised aloft and 'held up to the admiring gaze of the

spectators, during which it was pleasing to observe a solemn

stillness reign, betokening the feelings of reverential awe,

awakened by the recollection of the noble spirit that once

animated it, contrasted with the present humiliation of its

mortal tenement.'

108

Local interest in the discovery had always been high and

it is possible that public attendance at the reburial had been

officially encouraged and/or unofficially nurtured by the

council, parish minister, guilds or dissenting churches: it was

certainly hard to prevent, given the incomplete walls of the

new church, and such ill-recorded local bodies as the 'Abbey

Royal Antiquarian Society', formed in March 1818 in the wake

of the discovery, would have monitored events closely. Later

minister Ebenezer Henderson noted the proliferation of

penny pictures and news-sheets and the constant chatter in

34 Robert Bruce's Bones

Dunfermline on the topic throughout 1818-19.

109

Even Lord

Elgin, in his letters to Sidmouth of March 1818, had warned

against any delay of news which might frustrate the interested

public.

110

Provost Wilson had also suggested the deployment

of militia to guard the tomb (rather than the too familiar burgh

constable).

111

Yet it is possible that the reports of a calm public filing past

to view the remains as they lay in state in November 1819

mask some measure of local tension. It was at this point in the

proceedings that some small relics – teeth and finger bones –

were allegedly stolen from the body as it lay on a wooden

(surely the local Masonic?) coffin board. The published

accounts of eye-witnesses Jardine, Gregory and Chalmers all

confirm the removal of small objects at this time. It is clear

from widespread reports of further Bruce grave relics in the

later nineteenth century – nails and pieces of cloth and coffin

– that a number of the dignitaries may also have obtained

a talisman of association from the Hero King (including

a medical colleague of Gregory's from Edinburgh).

112

The

burgh crowd was obliged to leave, however, before the local

worthies and visiting dignitaries oversaw the final sealing of

the remains in pitch, lead coffin and new floor-level brick and

stone-topped vault.

113

That this exclusion of the townsfolk may have caused

resentment is suggested by the fact that within five days of the

re-interment workmen were said to have recovered a copper

plaque bearing the legend 'Robertus Scottorum Rex' from a

nearby debris pile. This was widely accepted at the time as

genuine and as having likely adorned the original external

stone coffin of the king: it was bought for the Society of

Antiquaries' Museum in Edinburgh, the finders rewarded with

gold and – in the manner of the royal regalia in 1818 -

commemorative prints were commissioned for sale. However,

by the 1870s (or perhaps earlier), it had emerged that this

plate – which had set 'all the authorities in movement' – was

a fake.

The perpetrators of this hoax were reported by one of their

number to be the younger brother of architect William Burn

and one of his Edinburgh artist friends at work in Dunfermline

(a Mr Thom), who had aimed at inflating the 'vanity' of the

natives; or, according to Ebenezer Henderson, they had been

one of the main contracted builders of the church, a John

Michael A. Penman IRSS 34 (2009) 35

Bonnar, working with a portrait painter (Thom), a historian

(Andrew Mercer) and a brewer (Robert Malcolm), all local

confederates.

114

The motive of the latter group, if responsible,

may have been to exploit the discovery in economic terms but

it may also have been spurred by minority doubts expressed

as to the identity of the bones (or aspersions cast on the

conduct of local workmen).

The Caledonian Mercury, for example, had noted as early as

26 February 1818 that 'there is as yet no ab solute certainty of

the tomb being his [Bruce's], no inscription to that effect

having been found.'

115

Writing in the 1840s, the Rvd Chalmers

would assert that the crude lead crown observed around the

skull in February 1818 had, by November 1819, either been

dissolved by the intrusion of air or 'carried off' by local trophy

hunters. Thus at the time the absence of any such marker – or

other proofs of the identity of the royal corpse, such as a signet

ring or sceptre of the kind found in Edward I of England's

tomb at Westminster in 1774 – may have roused locals to act in

defence of their prize and burgh honour. In doing so, these

individuals arguably acted on local memories of the discovery

of another metal plate in 1807, during the aforementioned

amateur investigations (decried by Dr Gregory as 'random

howking'), which had borne the legend 'Robertus Dei Gratia

Rex Scottorum.' Curiously, this object had been bought by the

recently returned earl of Elgin for his collection: but neither

the earl nor any townsmen referred to this earlier find during

the events of 1818-9.

116

At the same time, however, it might also be conjectured

that such a lucrative hoax also reflected some mounting

disquiet in 1819 at the simple dicta tion of proceedings

by bureaucrats, gentry and clubbable men from the city of

Edinburgh in exclusive contact with the entrenched burgh

oligarchy of Wilson and co.: there was certainly expressed a

widespread distaste in the town at the thought of the king's

remains, behind closed doors, being covered in hot pitch for

all eternity.

117

These issues, indeed, seem the more compelling

as catalysts to the fraud. Certainly no party – scholar, church -

man, councillor, land owner, local or outsider – attempted to

argue the case that the skeleton might be someone other than

Robert Bruce: identification never seemed in doubt.

118

In 1819 there may have been some behind-the-scenes

unease caused, too,by the varying tones of the speeches delivered

36 Robert Bruce's Bones

on 5 November after Provost Wilson had bestowed the

freedom of the burgh on Lord Chief Baron Shepherd, Jardine,

Rattray, MacDonald and the other dignitaries present. Wilson

himself spoke of 'our veneration and respect for the remains of

one of the most illustrious kings, the glory and toast of every

Scotsman, and, I believe, I may say of every Briton – the

assertor of the liberties and independence of his country.'

Although this was not unsympathetic to the spirit of unionist

nationalism likely shared by most of the visiting government

officials, the replies of Shepherd and Rattray much more

pointedly emphasised the present Hanoverian Union and how

Bruce's achievements meant a Scot and an Englishman could

thus be friends: 'it is to Robert Bruce that our present Monarch

owes his seat on the throne of three realms; the line of

connexion between the former realms and later Prince,

through the family of the Stuarts, being easily traced, so that

well may every Englishman, no less than every Scotsman,

glory in the same….'

119

It is tempting to speculate that private exchanges made

clear the Crown's and government's likely displeasure at any

uncomfortable political views emanating from Dunfermline

and associated with Bruce's remains, all the more so in the

wake of Lord Archibald Hamilton's Parliamentary inquiry

into burgh finances. Shepherd, Jardine and MacDonald may

also have been somewhat perturbed by the presence of

dissenting clergy at the re-interment, the intrusion of the local

crowd and the relic thefts. That the atmosphere of the event

may have become somewhat strained can, though, only be

hinted at: Provost Wilson certainly later went to the aforemen-

tioned trouble of impressing upon Lord Chief Commissioner

Adam that neither the use of pitch nor his absence on the day

had been condemned by the other church heritors quoted in

the Edinburgh Courant ; Wilson was also later effusive in his

messages to Jardine about subsequent bone discoveries in the

churchyard.

120

Then, in 1822, perhaps following a Blair Adam

Club visit in summer 1821, the parish would be strikingly

generous in gifting the old pulpit and other woodwork of the

nave church to Walter Scott, now also made a freeman of the

burgh and who would secure a copy of the cast of Bruce's skull

for his study cabinet at Abbotsford.

121

But most singular of all, on 12 November 1819 – just a week

after the re-interment and six days before the resolutions of

Michael A. Penman IRSS 34 (2009) 37

the jittery Fife County meeting at Cupar – the Burgh Council of

Dunfermline drafted an address to the Prince Regent pledging

their 'firm and undeviating attachment to your Royal person

and government…' and denouncing the 'audacious and undis-

guised attempts resorted to by dis affected and unprincipled

Demagogues to poison the minds of the lower classes…'; the

address sought to underline the loyalty of their 'populous

manufacturing town.'

122

Surely a reference to the recent radical

meetings held in the burgh, this was a very conventional and

oft-repeated way of seeking favour and financial aid from the

Court and Treasury influence in Parliament. But the unusually

dramatic language deployed on this occasion perhaps suggests

that Wilson and the rest of his Council were further prompted

to action by concerns as to the imminent repercussions of both

the Parliamentary inquiry of that year and the discomfort

surrounding the new church and royal bones (perhaps even

worries that Shepherd, Adam, Scott or Ranald MacDonald

might express their displeasure in writing).

Campaigns for a Bruce Memorial, c.1819-c.1900

A cooling of establishment enthusiasm for the discovery at

Dunfermline is certainly reflected in the fate of the various

proposed monuments for Bruce and his new resting place.

Newspaper coverage of the 1819 reb urial had asserted that the

Lords Baron of Exchequer 'mean to erect an elegant sarcoph-

agus, with a suitable inscription.'

123

Gregory had certainly

penned a possible Latin epitaph for this purpose although

its wordy, impassioned text seems unlikely to have been

condoned by unionist Edinburgh authorities.

124

In September 1821, at the opening of the completed new

church, the promise of a Bruce sarcophagus before the pulpit

from the Lords Baron was repeated. But this pledge would

never be honoured. Nor would the early calls for a 'national

monument': these had come in 1818 from both the aristocratic

Caledonian Hunt of Edinburgh and the 'gentlemen of

Stirlingshire' at the Bannockburn Borestone.

125

Yet a some-

what controversial local compromise had been reached with

the erection of Dunfermline's new central church tower in

1820-1, with its striking and highly visible balustrade lettering

of 'King Robert The Bruce', installed by William Burn and

paid for by local donors (including Elgin) rather than by

heritor assessment.

126

Nor should it be overlooked that the

38 Robert Bruce's Bones

heritors and Lords Baron had at least ensured that the remains

had been reburied in a Protestant public space within the walls

of the new parish church.

127

Nevertheless, much of the difficulty about a further Bruce

memorial within the church – over-and-above fears of liturgy -

clearly circled around who should be liable for the cost of a

Bruce tomb in addition to the cost of maintaining the abbey

and its adjacent royal palace apartments and their grounds as

a historic site: Exchequer, all heritors, noble benefactors or

public subscription? No solution or donor was quickly found.

There may also have been the difficult question of what form

any such monument should take. It would be all too easy,

indeed, to accuse the authorities of the day of an understand-

able collective 'failure of nerve' (to borrow from Marinell

Ash's thesis on The Strange Death of Scottish History in the

nineteenth century) in their oversight and structuring of the

reburial. The Lords Baron and magistrates either never

considered, or could find no suitable precedents, by which the

public and local community might be more formally engaged

and embraced in a ceremony designed to enhance and

confirm loyalty to the Protestant Crown. A formal lying in

state, funeral service and reburial beneath a Gothic effigy

might easily have smacked of popery. At the same time, what

style or pose of physical likeness and accessories (sword, coat

of arms etc.) or abstract or architectural form would best

satisfy the predominant concern to avoid anti-English or

radical liberal reform connotations and to support monarchy

and Union?

128

However, this was, after all, an unprecedented parochial

situation, at what was the height of radical tension in post-1815

Scotland. Moreover, this was a dilemma which would affect a

number of nineteenth century historical statues and monu-

ments. Arguably it was not until after the deaths of many of

the key participants in the events of 1818-19 – with Scott

passing in 1832, Adam in 1839 and Elgin in 1841 – that fresh

impetus for a commemorative Bruce structure at Dunfermline

grew.

In 1846 the massive Gothic tower of the Walter Scott

Monument, paid for by public subscription in Edinburgh,

was successfully completed in Princes Street Gardens on time:

this was arguably the most conspicuous achievement of the

post-Union tradition of commemorating recently deceased

Michael A. Penman IRSS 34 (2009) 39

statesmen, soldiers and men of letters, following public

subscription monuments and statues to such figures as David

Hume (Calton Hill, Edinburgh, 1777-8), Robert Burns (1798 in

Ayr High Street, 1812-31 in Regent Road, Edinburgh), poet

and author of 'Rule Britannia' James Thomson (1819, in

Ednam in Roxburghshire) or 1

Viscount Melville (column,

St Andrews' Square, Edinburgh, 1819-27).

129

Yet in 1845, the

Glasgow Herald reported that 'every pilgrim who visits the

shrine [at Dunfermline abbey] feels and laments the want of

such a memorial.'

130

This plea had perhaps been prompted by

the publication of Rvd Chalmers of Dunfermline's expanded

Statistical Account (1844) which bemoaned 'that the exact site of

the grave of Robert Bruce should not yet be distinguished in

any way, even by letters or a crown on the pavement, is much

to be regretted, as it may in the course of time be forgotten';

he called for heritor action.

131

This public shame reportedly drew history painter Sir

Joseph Noël Paton (1821-1901) to design, in c.1845, a dignified

marble sarcophagus for Bruce, with four kneeling corner

knights as mourners [plate 3]. Significantly, Paton was born in

Dunfermline and remained a Guild member there while

establishing a reputation in London as a royal and public

artist. Local tradition, though, holds that his father, Joseph Neil

Paton (1797-1874), a weaving manufacturer, Quaker,

antiquarian and later director of a Dunfermline School of Art,

had as a young man stolen a toe bone from the exposed

skeleton of Bruce in November 1819: this relic is now in the

care of the Hunterian collection, Glasgow. The £2,000 cost of

Paton's proposed tomb was to be met by public subscription.

Again, however, this seems to have been a dead end at a time

when the Dunfermline heritors were much burdened with the

upkeep and heating costs of the Abbey church (although

Paton's design for the great west stained-glass window of the

new abbey church – depicting Wallace, Bruce, Malcolm III and

St Margaret – was executed).

132

Thus in 1859 Rvd Chalmers

could reiterate this 'subject of long and great regret…that

nothing has ever been done to mark, and point out especially

to strangers, the exact site of the tombs of King Robert Bruce

and of his Queen, Elizabeth': this time he suggested a

commemorative tablet (perhaps using Dr Gregory's text) at

the foot of the pulpit, but to no avail.

133

However, the struggles of this and other prominent public

40 Robert Bruce's Bones

subscription attempts to erect historical monuments in

nineteenth century Scotland provide further proof that the

impediments in 1818-19 to the greater commemoration of

Bruce's remains were not merely personal and political, or

unique to those years or that locality: there were older and

larger cultural obstacles to such a memorial.

George III's reign had seen the remarkable popularisation

of such annual celebrations as the reigning king's birthday

(4 June) and Jubilee (25 October).

134

In Dunfermline these

dates were marked with almost comic repetition by a holiday

from work, bonfires, flags, bell-ringing, canon-fire, squibs and

rockets and a Council procession and toast at the mercat cross

followed by more drinking indoors.

135

The public of the king-

doms of the British Isles were moreover increasingly disposed to

honour, present to or mourn and commemorate their military

heroes, and especially the fallen, such as Wolfe and Nelson, in

contemporary Imperial wars overseas: the development of

Westminster and St Paul's in London as national mausoleums

c.1780-c.1820 for contemporary statesmen, soldiers, sailors,

writers, artists and composers stood testament to this trend.

136

More remote (but not yet medieval) historical events of partic-

ular relevance to the house of Hanover were also increasingly

commemorated, for example the anniversary of the Glorious

Revolution of 1688 or the suppression of the 1745 Jacobite

rebellion, or, on 1 August 1814, the centenary of the Hanoverian

succession.

137

Scots also had an understandable propensity to

commemorate their Presbyterian and Covenanting icons and

martyrs.

138

Generally speaking, however, it would be the second half

of the nineteenth century before statues, plaques and other

physical monuments to distinctly historical figures and

anniversary commemoration events were popular currency in

most developed nations and presented, indeed, as national

memorials (with the notable exception of France where crisis

precipitated earlier, politicised commemoration of a national

Pantheon and other figures and events).

139

Between c.1850-c.1900 a whole series of sweeping changes

had certainly had or begun their effect upon the British Isles.

Some of these developments would have a more marked

impact upon Scotland and its urban centres: royal burgh and

parliamentary electoral reform and a growth in support for

male universal suffrage; party political fragmentation and the

Michael A. Penman IRSS 34 (2009) 41

growth of Home Rule sentiment as a political challenge;

labour unionisation; steam power, railway mania and the

development of public transport, mass communications and

the beginnings of popular tourism; photography, improved

literacy and the foundation of national museums (1861),

portrait galleries (1889), public libraries and school curricula;

the general proliferation of competitive civic societies and

community leisure associations; and cheaper print and the

explosion of illustrated newspapers, chapbooks, novels, public

lectures, variety theatre and other forms of popular entertain-

ment, to name but a few.

140

Queen Victoria's partial restoration of a cult of popular

monarchy with strong ties to a romantic, largely Highland ised,

Scotland would also prove a crucial factor – in tandem with

the lasting legacy of Walter Scott's novels and their

imitators. This repaired much of the damage done by George

IV and the Queen Caroline affair (1820) and Victoria's own

early dour image. In 1842 Victoria's tour of Scotland took in

Stirling - where the Queen visited both Bannockburn and the

new mausoleum erected to mark the grave of James III (1460-

88) at Cambuskenneth Abbey – and then Dunfermline.

141

The

royal commemorative speeches given at these sites empha-

sised the union and 'blending' of past monarchical enemies

in the person of the present heir of both lines, through

Saxon, Norman, Plantagenet, Bruce, Stewart/Stuart, Tudor

and Teutonic Hanover (again, much in the manner of Scott's

novels).

142

Yet before c.1850 even such celebrated and recent historical

events as the British victory of Waterloo, and calls about 1818-9

for the subscription erection of a National Monument on

Calton Hill in Edinburgh in veneration of Scotland's war effort

against Napoleon, still struggled to attract sufficient support

from private citizens, institutions and government and to

avoid Whig versus Tory divisions.

143

It fell instead to wealthy

individuals or small local societies to pay for singular memorials.

For example: the stern statue of William Wallace at Dryburgh

erected in 1814 by David Steuart Erskine, 11

Earl of Buchan

(1742-1829), maverick nationalist, political reformer and

founder of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, who never

fulfilled his declared intention to establish a 'Temple of

Caledonian Fame' on his own estate: this was the Wallace

statue, popular with visitors, which Walter Scott threatened to

42 Robert Bruce's Bones

blow up, so offended were his unionist sensibilities.

144

Then

there was the Edinburgh memorial to Robert Burns funded

slowly by various civic societies c1812-31

145

; or the local

subscription for the Barnweil Wallace Tower near Ayr (1855)

and the Wallace statue added to another nearby 'Wallace

Tower' (1833)

146

; or the Marquis of Bute's gift of an £80 bust

of Robert Bruce for the Wallace Monument 'hall of heroes' in

1886

147

; and the 9

Earl of Elgin's donation of the Bruce relief

effigy brass at Dunfermline in 1889, Victoria's Jubilee Year.

148

In contrast, the role of the state in encouraging, sponsoring

or financing such memorialisation remained under-developed,

although the 1820s did see the allied creation of a Scottish

Office of Works, headed by Robert Reid (1774-1856) which

began moves to formalise the hitherto ad hoc responsibility

and funding interventions of the Exchequer in the upkeep of

former Crown buildings.

149

Alongside this, it would be the

mid-century and beyond before country-wide efforts for

distinctly 'national monuments' and – as Linda Colley has

styled it – 'an official cult of the hero in Britain' could be publi-

cised and popularised by Crown and government involve-

ment.

150

This was a phenomenon which Graeme Morton has

identified as intensifying in Scotland through 'national' move-

ments for memorials – predominantly Unionist - to mark

Walter Scott's death (1832-46), Robert Burns' centenary

(1859), an abortive call for a Wallace and Bruce monument

with sculpture in Edinburgh (1859, again designed by Sir

Joseph Noël Paton) and the National Wallace Monument

(1856-69).

151

The development and completion of each of

these projects, however, proved problematic.

It followed that for much of the nineteenth century the

marking and shaping of the historical reputations of great indi-

viduals and great events – and in particular of Scotland's

medieval icons and their life achievements – remained the

preserve of private citizens, local or regional civic associations

and competing interest groups. Even in the later century,

however, historical heroes' reputations could still stutter. The

Glasgow Herald reported periodically from 1869 to 1877 about

the design disputes and delays affecting a Bruce memorial

planned at Lochmaben (a former Bruce family lordship).

152

1869-70 a newly-formed Bannockburn committee for the

erection of a monument to the memory of the 'sadly neglected'

Robert Bruce at the scene of his greatest victory near Stirling

Michael A. Penman IRSS 34 (2009) 43

drew up plans for a ten foot tall bronze statue of the king in

chain armour atop a rock pedestal, and even sent artist's plans

to Queen Victoria.

153

But it would be the mid-twentieth

century before such a design was realised at Bannockburn,

which had to content itself in the meantime with the raising of

a new 120 foot tall Borestone flagpole gifted by the Masonic

lodges of central Scotland: the Borestone became, of course,

the annual pilgrimage site of Home Rule campaigners in the

late nineteenth century, and of the Scottish National Party in

the twentieth.

154

Arguably, Robert Bruce had to wait until 1914

and 1929 for the Sex-Centenary celebrations of his battle

victory and burial at Stirling and Dunfermline respectively for

full and confident public commemorations marked by the

participation of national as well as local government, the law,

the churches and the military.

155

Elsewhere, in Stirling even the royal castle (then a barracks

like Edinburgh Castle) only completed its commissioning and

raising of a neutrally-posed statue to Bruce as a 'Victorian

knight' in 1877, sculpted by Andrew Currie. The newspaper

reports of the day, though, noted that the idea for such a figure

on the esplanade, now a counterpart to Wallace's National

Monument and statue-with-sword across the Forth, had actu-

ally first been raised 'about 1814', the anniversary of the battle,

and revived 'in the 1820s' in the contemporary spirit of 'the

enlightened policy of cenotaphs' for poets, statesmen and

heroes.

156

A statue to Bruce was raised at Dumfries by the local

Burns Club in 1898 but a year earlier Edinburgh Council had

been publicly accused of squandering yet another private

bequest of £2,500 for the erection of similar matched statues

of Wallace and Bruce on their castle esplanade in emulation

of the donated Wallace figures within the burghs of Stirling

(1819) and Aberdeen (1888).

157

Of course, even the cause of erecting the National Wallace

Monument itself at Stirling in the 1850s-60s, honouring the

obvious Scottish people's champion, had struggled to garner

sustained public financial support due to a conflation of civic,

political, personal and financial rivalries.

158

A first 'national'

attempt had seemingly been made sometime in 1818 when

an anonymous 'truly patriotic person', an Edinburgh-born

member of the Highland Society of London, offered £1,000

through Blackwood's Magazine towards the erection of a monu-

ment to Wallace on Calton Hill or Salisbury Crags in Edinburgh,

44 Robert Bruce's Bones

provided the design did 'not give offence to our brethren south

of the Tweed.' Whether or not this tender had been inspired

by the rediscovery of the regalia and/or Bruce's bones, or even

noises from Glasgow weavers about such a Wallace memorial

in the same year, is unclear.

159

Then, during the fund-raising and building work for the

eventual National Wallace Monument (with the foundation

stone laid on Bannockburn Day, 1861), the party of the

predominant Victorian ideology of 'unionist nationalism'

struggled at times to ensure that the monument conveyed no

anti-English/anti-Union meaning in the cause of such 'nation-

alist' historians as William Burns (1809-76). However, Sir

Joseph Noël Paton's controversial allegorical design of 'Lion

fighting Typhon' was passed over for the safer 'national archi-

tecture' of the Stirling mock-baronial tower at Abbey Craig.

160

Nevertheless, even once the Monument had been formally

opened (on the anniversary of Stirling Bridge, 11 September

1869), the charitable fund established to oversee its donations

became the subject of a highly public libel case in 1880 which

itself revealed interesting and divided contemporary attitudes

towards historical monuments to great men.

Stirling garrison chaplain and historian, Dr Charles Rogers

(1825-90), the National Wallace Monument's former treasurer,

was accused of drawing profit from the campaign: the Glasgow

Herald noted Rogers' past role in the erection of statues to

Bruce (in Stirling) and the recently deceased James Hogg

(d. 1835), Thomas Chalmers (1770-1847) and Covenanting

martyr James Guthrie (d. 1661), as well as his current duties on

a monument committee for John Knox (d.1572) at the

redesigned (by William Burn) Edinburgh parish church of

St Giles. Such energetic activity left Rogers open to the jibe

in court that he was about to beget 'a monument to [biblical]

Adam.'

161

This hilarity echoed, however, comments offered in

the same newspaper in 1869, reporting on a National Wallace

Monument committee meeting called to discuss the financial

difficulties of the near-completed tower: that earlier editorial

lambasted both the Wallace project and the Lochmaben Bruce

statue group for indulging in 'monument mania' (akin to

military or professional 'presentation mania' of subscription

swords, canes, certificates, bibles etc), revealing only their own

vanity as men in search of cultural and intellectual status and

plaudits. The Herald furthermore asserted that such heroic

Michael A. Penman IRSS 34 (2009) 45

figures did not need 'absurd abortions' from architects, but

that their real achievements were 'written in the annals…[and]

graven on the hearts' of their countrymen: 'those who deserve

statues most require them least'!

162

Bruce in Press and Print, c.1818-c.1900

Throughout this catalogue of monument campaigns there is

arguably further evidence to show that the image of Robert

Bruce had also long suffered from an extra layer of resistance

to memorialisation, leaving him over-shadowed by the legacy

of Wallace (and, to an extent, Robert Burns). In 1818, beyond

the daily press, the reaction to the discovery of Bruce's

apparent remains had been slight, marked notably only by

Edinburgh theatres quickly presenting plays and vignettes

about Bruce which would return repeatedly over the next two

years by 'particular desire.'

163

Over the remainder of the

century a fairly steady flow of history books, novels, school

'readers', chapbooks, poems, plays and images would feature

or focus upon Bruce, inscribing his reputation 'in the annals',

indeed; but there was not a sudden explosion of literature in

the years immediately after 17 February 1818 or 5 Nov ember

1819.

Perhaps the most sustained initial reaction in print came

in the form of phrenological analysis and debate in the

wake of Jardine's published report of the grave and skeleton

inspection. This increasingly popular pseudo-science (which

had associations with urban radicalism) undeniably had its

academic and governmental critics in the nineteenth century,

reviewers who then – as now – slammed its self-fulfilling

pronouncements about the skull subject's 'organs', in this case

deducing the ethnic traits and qualities expected of a hero king

of Scots: full 'combativeness' and 'destructiveness', a warm

temper, marked 'secretiveness', high chivalry, perseverance,

frugality and piety (though with the added caveat that the

latter might now be perceived as Catholic 'superstition'), and –

explaining Bruce's sacrilegious murderer of John Comyn in

1306 - a 'not considerable' sense of justice.

164

However, these

analyses were arguably only slightly more questionable than

the uncritical acceptance by Jardine, Gregory and others of

the skeleton's identity and their perception in those mortal

remnants of received characteristics of King Robert, for

example emphasising his stature [5' 11" to 6' tall] and valour.

165

46 Robert Bruce's Bones

Certainly both these 'official' reports and enthusiasts' analyses

of the skull contributed to the casting of Bruce's physical

image for time immemorial, both in print and sculpted

form.

166

Most later printed works about Bruce or the Wars of

Independence also usually closed with a narrative of the

discovery and re-interment of the king in 1818-19.

167

More -

over, in 1820, a new edition of Archdeacon John Barbour's

fourteenth-century poem, The Bruce, was published in tandem

with Hary's Wallace, reviving a printing tradition of pairing

these works first begun in the late sixteenth century, but this

time with The Bruce (which actually never mentions Wallace)

appearing first in the volume.

168

Bruce's story even became

the subject of an operatic pastiche by Rossini (but not until

1846), which was itself the subject of numerous popular piano

and song transcriptions.

169

The 'memory of Robert Bruce' and

'the heroes of Bannockburn' were also regularly the annual

toast of Scottish and expatriate civil societies reported in

the press throughout the nineteenth century, but always

bumpered after such conventions and icons as the king (later

queen), St Andrew, Wallace and Lord Nelson.

170

Crucially, in the majority of Georgian and Victorian

written works prominence continued to be given to the quite

specific and artificial link between Wallace and Bruce estab-

lished through the medieval texts of Walter Bower (fl.1440-9)

and Blind Hary (c.1478) and perhaps based on earlier oral

traditions and local ballads: namely, that of the two warriors

meeting at Carron Shore after the battle of Falkirk (1298).

Here, the lesser subject, Wallace, unspoiled by political ambi-

tion, turned the aristocratic Bruce away from his wavering

alliance with England and on to the road to patriotic kingship

and the liberation of Scotland at Bannockburn. A literary

convention which permitted 'loyal' advice to medieval

princes, such a tale would have powerful resonance in

Georgian and Victorian campaigns for peaceful political

reform and socio-economic justice and thus wider representa-

tion for the growing middle and skilled working classes.

17 1

Little wonder, then, that when Bruce's bones were unearthed

and publicised, the Tory Blackwood's Magazine had run a

competition in December 1818 – with the £50 of prizes

donated by the same anonymous patriot who had offered

money for an Edinburgh Wallace monument - for the best

Michael A. Penman IRSS 34 (2009) 47

poem depicting this famous exchange between Wallace and

Bruce at Carron Shore. As Colin Kidd has shown, the winner,

Felicia Hemans (1793-1835), was an English poet and her

unthreatening verse 'Wallace's Invocation to Bruce' sat comfort-

ably with majority pro-Union sentiment.

17 2

In subsequent

popular nineteenth and early twentieth century novelisations

of the Wars by Jane Porter, Grace Aguilar, G.A. Henty and

Agnes Mure Mackenzie – to list just a few – this incident at

Carron Shore typically appeared in some form and Bruce

always began his kingship by invoking the name of Wallace,

invariably as his friend: the majority of these fictions were all

bound, too, before c.1918 to the n otion of Wallace and Bruce

contributing to Scotland's and England's union of equals.

173

At the same time, the debate in 'academic' circles - or

between historians deploying medieval documentary

evidence against popular writers who upheld the 'traditionary'

stories of 'Wallace and Bruce' drawn from Barbour and Hary -

focussed upon Robert Bruce's early record of submission,

defection, murder and possible treachery before his seizure of

the throne in 1306.

17 4

But Hary's tale of Wallace turning and

inspiring Bruce proved resilient to scholarly revision,

persisting in popular histories, novels, chapbooks and penny

readers well into the twentieth century.

175

This was the case

even though Walter Scot, on at least one occasion, in his Tales

of a Grandfather (1827), had replaced this historic moment

at Carron with Bruce suffering instead a Macbeth-like sense

of guilt with his countrymen's blood on his hands. Scott, of

course, avoided fictionalising a Wars of Independence topic

until his very last novel, Castle Dangerous (1831), and dodged

his publisher's calls for a history of Bruce.

176

Allied to this, Bruce's great victory at Bannockburn outside

Stirling became the increasing focus of Home Rule

campaigners. Annual rallies on the battle anniversary, 24

June, at the Borestone at Bannockburn swelled around the

ideas of liberation and freedom as perceived to have been

achieved in 1314, yet with the memory and name of William

Wallace and Robert Burns' famous song and reform mantra,

'Scots Wha Hae wi' Wallace Bled', far more naturally and

frequently invoked than details of Bruce's life or material

remains.

17 7

Yet as vocal, organised and seemingly popular

as such a cause became, self-determination for Scotland

remained a minority political and cultural platform. Therefore

48 Robert Bruce's Bones

it was little wonder, perhaps, that as late as the 1920s and

1960s public subscription campaigns for statues to Bruce at

Edinburgh Castle and Bannockburn respectively continued to

struggle to raise funds and depended upon wealthy expatriates

for completion.

178

Conclusion

Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries there

arguably persisted a sense in which Robert Bruce as an estab-

lishment figure, a calculating aristocrat or royal, would always

be questionable in his loyalties and required to be restored by

Wallace, who was transformed into a medieval 'lad o'pairts'

and meritocratic martyr.

179

As much is reflected in the letters of

Dunfermline's most famous son, industrialist and millionaire

philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919). He impressed

upon Germany's Kaiser that Wallace as 'the man of the people

comes first', even though he had been brought up as a child

with Bruce as his local hero. Carnegie also refused to donate

money for another planned statue to Bruce at Dunfermline

in 1904, remarking in his memoirs that he did not care to

venerate a king given little justice in his uncle's teachings on

Scottish history: 'a king is an insult to every other man of the

land.'

180

In sum, there is ample evidence to show that the personal

sensitivities of key individuals and both the wider local and

national political concerns of the day interacted to shape and

arguably to limit the memorialisation of Robert Bruce's bones

at Dunfermline and throughout Scotland in 1818-19 and well

beyond. The spectrum of Whigs, radicals and anti-Union

elements feared by the establishment were not yet attuned

or willing to make constructive use of Bruce's memory and

physical remains in their dissent and calls for reform. At the

same time, the predominant unionist-nationalist consensus

was not yet so universal and confident as to find natural and

unchallenged paternalist expression through the raising of an

obviously suitable monument to Bruce as at once a Scot and

Briton at Dunfermline (or in the capitol, Edinburgh) in 1819 or

the years which immediately followed. Matters might have

been different, perhaps, had the bones been unearthed either

during the Napoleonic Wars at the height of Scotland's

national military effort or, conversely, after the quashed

'Radical War' of 1820 and/or Walter Scott's carefully designed

Michael A. Penman IRSS 34 (2009) 49

royal visit of 1822. But in the tense political climate c.1815-

c.1819 which had fallen between these watersheds even a

moderate Whig like William Adam of Blair Adam may have

been alienated by the government's nervous interference in

Dunfermline's royal event.

However, even if such conditions had not prevailed, there

were in general so few precedents, and insufficient cultural

acceptance of statues or other commemorative structures to

long-dead historical figures, to make such a response either

natural or possible from national or local government, 'civic

society', or the urban middle and working classes of

Presbyterian Scotland. As such, the incident of 'Bruce's bones'

and reactions to their discovery provide a subtle and enig-

matic barometer of Scottish politics and culture within a

complexity of competing identities in the early nineteenth

century and beyond.

50 Robert Bruce's Bones

NOTES

The author would like to thank: the Strathmartine Trust and

Carnegie Trust for supporting research for this paper; Miss Tessa

Spencer of the National Register of Archives of Scotland; Mr Keith

Adam, for permission to cite material from Blair Adam Archive

[NRAS 1454] and Mr John Getley and the other archivists of that

collection for their guidance; His Grace, the 11

Earl of Elgin and

Kincardine, for his advice about the sources of Broomhall House;

the staff of the Dunfermline Local History Centre; and Professor

Graeme Morton of the University of Guelph, anonymous referees,

Professor Charles McKean of the University of Dundee,

and my Stirling colleagues Professor David Bebbington,

Dr Iain G.C. Hutchison, Dr Emma MacLeod, Mrs Helen Rapport

and Dr Alasdair Ross, for comments on earlier drafts.

T. Carlyle, Past and Present [1843], ed. C.R. Vanden Bossche et al

(Los Angeles, 2006), p. 37.

The Ipsos-MORI Social Policy Monitor: Research Study Conducted for

Stirling University (14

Jan-5

March 2006). This survey of 1,000

Scots was commissioned as part of Stirling History's Reputations in

Scottish History teaching and research project in conjunction with

the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, and its 2006

exhibition 'Great Scot!' [J. Smyth and M. Penman, 'Reputations

and national identity, or what do our heroes say about us?,'

Études Écossaises, 10 (2005), pp. 11-24, and conference proceedings

pp. 25-118]: those surveyed were free to name any figure, i.e. there

was no predetermined list from which to choose. E.J. Cowan, ed.,

The Wallace Book (Edinburgh: John Donald, 2007); G. Morton,

William Wallace: Man and Myth (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2001);

L. McIlvanney, Burns the Radical: Poetry and Politics in Late

Eighteenth-Century Scotland (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2002).

E.g., '[David] Starkey in 'Scotland adores failure' rant,' Scotland on

Sunday, 19 Oct. 2008. Even in a number of other recent public poll

exercises, or when specific socio-economic or professional groups in

Scotland are surveyed, Bruce typically polls just outside the top two.

For example, a poll reported in the Scotsman on 18 Dec. 1999

surveyed all those who appeared in Who's Who in Scotland: this

group voted Burns, then Wallace, Bruce, Adam Smith and James

Clerk Maxwell as the greatest Scots 'in history.' In a Scotland on

Sunday on-line public vote (again without a predetermined list) of

29 December 2002, Alexander Fleming polled first [26%], Wallace

second [17%], Burns and Bruce joint third [11%], the late first

Michael A. Penman IRSS 34 (2009) 51

Scottish First Minister Donald Dewar fourth [7%] and engineer

James Watt fifth [5%]; a poll of academic experts by the same paper

from 8-22 January 2006 returned Wallace first, Burns second, Bruce

third, Fleming fourth and Adam Smith fifth. Stirling's and the

SNPG's Ipsos-MORI p oll returned Dewar and Fleming tied fourth

[4%].

M. Penman, 'King Robert the Bruce (1274-1329),' Études Écossaises ,

10 (2005), pp. 25-40, in part a companion to G.M. Brunsden,

'Aspects of Scotland's Social, Political and Cultural Scene in the late

and early 18

Centuries, as Mirrored in the Wallace and Bruce

Traditions,' in E.J. Cowan and D. Gifford, eds., The Polar Twins

(Edinburgh: John Donald, 1999), pp. 75-113.

Penman, 'King Robert the Bruce (1274-1306),' pp. 37-9.

E. Henderson, Annals of Dunfermline (Glasgow, 1879), pp. 594-605.

A Memoir of the Late Ebenezer Henderson by his niece [with an Appendix

on the Royal Tombs] (Edinburgh, 1910), p. 8.

Penman, 'King Robert the Bruce (1274-1329),' p. 39.

I. Fraser, 'The Tomb of the Hero King: the Death and Burial of

Robert I, and the discoveries of 1818-19,' in R. Fawcett, ed., Royal

Dunfermline (Edinburgh: Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 2005),

pp. 155-76.

C. Brown, Religion and Society in Scotland since 1707 (Edinburgh:

Edinburgh University Press, 1997), ch. 5; S.J. Brown, The National

Churches of England, Ireland and Scotland, 1801-1846 (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2001), pp. 68-72; BL Add MS 38,271, Liverpool

Papers vol. lxxxii, ff. 10-11, ff.105-110.

R. Evetts, 'Dunfermline Abbey Parish Church,' in Fawcett, ed.,

Royal Dunfermline, pp. 209-12; R. Fawcett, The Abbey and Palace of

Dunfermline (Edinburgh: Historic Scotland guidebook, 1990).

Even the celebrated History, Ancient and Modern, of the Sheriffdoms

of Fife and Kinross…(1710), by geographer Sir Robert Sibbald (1641-

1722) provided only the most cursory description of Dunfermline

Abbey and its royal burials, with an engraved view of Dunfermline

only in the Tullis edition of London, 1803, pp. 293-7; Sibbald's great

love, however, was Roman remains, a focus also pursued by anti-

quarians and cartographers such as Alexander Gordon (1692-1754),

Sir John Clerk of Penicuik (1676-1755), Walter Macfarlane (d.1767),

General William Roy (1730-90), George Chalmers of Caledonia fame

(1742-1825), and Sir Daniel Wilson (1816-92), champions of a type

lovingly lampooned by Sir Walter Scott in The Antiquary (1816).

It was Sir David Dalrymple of Hailes (1726-92) who pioneered

documentary investigation of Scotland's middle ages [R.G. Cant,

52 Robert Bruce's Bones

'David Steuart Erskine, 11

Earl of Buchan: Founder of the Society

of Antiquaries of Scotland,' in A.S. Bell, ed., The Scottish Antiquarian

Tradition (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1981), pp. 1-30, at 11-2; S.

Piggott and M. Robertson, Three Centuries of Scottish Archaeology

(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1977), nos. 14-69].

The early papers and published volumes of the SAS [i, 1792; ii,

1818 and 1822], provided a platform for a growing number of

studies of medieval sites and material, rather than pre-historic and

Roman topics, although these proceedings did suffer from an

Ossianic obsession c.1791-1815 (15% of its papers!) and what was

later described as a 'long state of torpor and inactivity' c.1794-1830

[D. Laing and S. Hibbert, 'Account of the Progress of the Society of

Antiquaries of Scotland' (1831), cited in A. Graham, 'Records and

Opinions: 1780-1930,' Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of

Scotland, 102 (1969-70), pp. 241-84]. The SAS did, though, pioneer

the parochial questionnaire of antiquities which Sinclair included

in the Statistical Account, searching out 'a) crosses and obelisks,

b) monastic ruins, c) castles, camps, altars, roads, forts etc, d) coins,

e) tumuli' [idem, 'The development of Scottish antiquarian records:

1600-1800,' PSAS, 106 (1974-5), pp. 183-90].

Fraser, 'Tomb of the Hero King,' pp. 161-5; S. Boardman,

'Dunfermline Abbey as a Royal Mausoleum,' in Fawcett, ed.,

Royal Dunfermline, pp. 139-53; J.G. Dalyell, A Tract chiefly relative to

Monastic Antiquities with some account of a recent search for the remains

of the Scottish Kings interred in the Abbey of Dunfermline (Edinburgh,

1809).

J. Sinclair, ed., The Statistical Account of Scotland, 1791-99, X: Fife,

intro. R.G. Cant (Wakefield: EP Publishing, 1978), p. 296; Fraser,

'Tomb of the Hero King,' pp. 161-3. The Statistical Account was later

expanded by the incumbent second minister (1817-) of Dunfermline

parish church, Rvd Peter Chalmers, an eye-witness to the events of

1818-9 [Historical and Statistical Account of Dunfermline (Edinburgh:

W. Blackwood, 2 vols., 1844 and 1859), i. 136-9].

NAS GB234/HR159/3, Dunfermline Parish Heritors Records, Minute

Book 1815-37, 5 May 1817.

Ibid, 5 May to 24 June 1817; Dunfermline Local History Centre,

DEc/ABB Pamphlet Box 5, Correspondence re. Building of Dunfermline

Abbey Church, 24 April to 26 May 1817. Another heritor, Dr

Robertson Barclay, championed the cheaper option of nave repairs.

W. St. Clair, Lord Elgin and the Marbles (Oxford: Oxford

Paperbacks, 1983), chs. 9-10; R. Fawcett, 'Robert Reid and the

Early Involvement of the State in the Care of Scottish Ecclesiastical

Buildings and Sites,' Antiquities Journal, 82 (2002), pp. 269-84.

Michael A. Penman IRSS 34 (2009) 53

For Elgin's efforts in recasting Edinburgh as a Modern Athens see

C. McKean, 'Unbuilt Athens' (forthcoming): my thanks to Professor

McKean for an advance copy of this article

Chalmers, Historical and Statistical Account of Dunfermline , i, p. 151;

H. Jardine, 'Extracts from the Report Made by Henry Jardine, Esq.,

His Majesty's Remembrancer in Exchequer, relative to the Tomb of

King Robert Bruce and the Church of Dunfermline, communicated

to the Society on 10 December 1821,' pp. 146-7, extracted from

Archaeologia Scotica: Transactions of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland,

ii (1822), pp. 435-55.

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (61 vols., Oxford, 2004),

8, pp. 880-3 [Burn]; St. Clair, Lord Elgin and the Marbles, ch. 22.

See also n49 below.

NAS GB234/HR159/3, Dunfermline Parish Heritors' Records, Minute

Book 1815-37, 8 Oct. 1812. In 1810 the government had intervened

to raise the minimum Church of Scotland parish stipend to £150

[Brown, The National Churches of England, Ireland and Scotland, p. 66].

Ibid, pp. 68-72.

NAS GB234/HR159/8, Dunfermline Parish Heritors' Records, Papers

re. ecclesiastical buildings 1805-1928, 25 Nov. 1820; S. Checkland,

The Elgins, 1766-1917: a tale of aristocrats, proconsuls and their wives

(Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1988), pp. 78-80.

NAS GB234/HR159/3, Dunfermline Parish Heritors' Records, Minute

Book 1815-37, 25 Nov. 1822. A growing general interest in Scotland's

medieval past and its relics about the time of the Dunfermline

discovery is suggested by notice taken, say, of the discovery of relics

of William I at Arbroath Abbey in 1817 or, in the following year, the

head of the staff of St Fillan, whose arm-bone had been venerated

by Robert Bruce at Bannockburn [Caledonian Mercury , 1 Aug. 1818;

G.S. Gimson, 'Lion Hunt: a royal tomb-effigy at Arbroath Abbey,'

PSAS, 125 (1995), pp. 901-16; the Arbroath marble statue of William

I was most likely commissioned by Robert Bruce c.1315].

NRAS 3955, Bruce Family, Earls of Elgin and Kincardine, /20/1/13;

S. Nagel, Mistress of the Elgin Marbles: a biography of Mary Nisbet,

Countess of Elgin (London: John Wiley & Son, 2004), p. 183.

Dalyell, A Tract…, 7; Henderson, Annals of Dunfermline, pp. 559-

61; Chalmers, Historical and Statistical Account of Dunfermline , i, 134-8.

Anonymous, The Trial of Robert Ferguson, Esquire (Edinburgh,

1807); St. Clair, Lord Elgin and the Marbles, chs. 11, 22; Checkland,

The Elgins, pp. 82-7.

54 Robert Bruce's Bones

NAS E.305/18, Exchequer: Treasury Minute Book 24 Nov. 1817-27

Apr. 1819 , 124; NAS E.310/23, King's Remembrancer's Letter Book

2 Jan. 1818-30 June 1818, pp. 41-2, 49-50, 64, 70, 82. These same

offices would liaise in 1819 to en sure that the new pulpit of the

church did not obscure the site of Bruce's tomb [ibid, p. 163].

J. Gregory, 'Exhumation and re-interment of Robert Bruce,'

Quarterly Journal of Science, Literature and the Arts, no. 9 (1820),

pp. 138-42.

J. Stuart et al, eds., The Exchequer Rolls of Scotland (23 vols.,

Edinburgh, 1878-1908), i, pp. 192, 213, 214, 215, 245, 288, 331;

Fraser, 'The Tomb of the Hero King,' pp. 156-7 [tomb fragment

images], pp. 172-5; 'Donations to Museum,' PSAS, 8 (1868-70),

pp. 360, 413 [tomb fragments]. For the medieval chronicles, see

Joannis de Fordun Scotichronicon cum Supplementis et Continuatione

Walteri Boweri, ed. W. Goodall (2 vols., Edinburgh, 1759).

NAS GB234/HR159/3, Dunfermline Parish Heritors' Records, Minute

Book 1815-37, 17 Feb. 1818; NAS CH2/105/14, Dunfermline Presbytery

Minutes 1809-23, /218. The Barons seem to have expressed such

concerns over royal remains and the treatment of the fragments of

medieval choir pillars as early as 17 February 1818, prompting the

heritors' meeting on that date – the same day as the bones'

discovery, but apparently before news had reached the heritors –

to suggest the expansion of the new church building to embrace

these ancient elements: the agreement of the Barons and the King's

[Deputy] Remembrancer 'who had visited the ground on Saturday

last,' i.e. even before the discovery of Bruce's bones, was to be

sought [NRAS 1454, Blair Adam Archive, Series 8/2231].

TNA HO102/29, Home Office: Scotland – Letters and Papers, /29

or /103, 1 March 1818.

Ibid, /32 or /109, 5 March 1818.

ODNB, 1, pp. 214-7; R.G. Thorne, ed., The House of Commons 1790-

1820 (5 vols., London: Secker and Warburg 1986), iii, pp. 28-36.

Elgin's representative informed him that Adam, Dr Robertson

Barclay and the present incumbent of the oldest heritor family of

Dunfermline, Sir Charles Halkett of Pitfirrane, had signed off on

a circular letter to the other heritors estimating that nave repairs

would cost £4,000 while a new church would cost £5,700: 'The

Lord Commissioner, too, wrote me that he had only signed this

paper with the view to have the matter of expense fully investigated

in the first place' [Dunfermline Local History Centre, Dec/ABB

Pamphlet Box 5, Correspondence re. Building of Dunfermline Abbey

Church, 26 May 1817]. My thanks to Mr John Getley and Rvd David

Reid of Blair Adam archive for additional heritor information.

Michael A. Penman IRSS 34 (2009) 55

C. Kidd, Subverting Scotland's Past: Scottish Whig Historians and

the creation of an Anglo-British identity, 1689-c.1839 (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1993), chs. 9 and 11 esp.; idem, 'The

canon of patriotic landmarks in Scottish history,' Scotlands, i (1994),

pp. 1-17; idem, 'The Strange Death of Scottish History revisited:

Constructions of the Past in Scotland, c.1790-1914,' SHR, lxxvi

(1997), pp. 86-102; idem, 'Sentiment, race and revival: Scottish

identities in the aftermath of Enlightenment,' in L. Brockliss and

D. Eastwood, eds., A Union of Multiple Identities: the British Isles,

c.1750-c.1850 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997),

pp. 110-26; R. Finlay, 'Controlling the Past: Scottish Historiography

and Scottish Identity in the 19

and 20

Centuries,' Scottish Affairs ,

9 (1994), pp. 127-42; J.E. Cookson, The British Armed Nation

1793-1815 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 146-52.

N. Phillipson, The Scottish Whigs and the Reform of the Court of

Session, 1785-1830 (Edinburgh: Stair Society, 1990), ch. vi.

ODNB, 49, pp. 490-510 [Scott]. For the club and much of the

biographical information which follows see: NRAS 1454, Blair

Adam Archive, William Adam, Remarks on the Blair Adam Estate

(privately printed, 1834), x-xxi; H. Grierson, ed., The Letters of

Sir Walter Scott (12 vols., London: Constable, 1932-7), vi, p. 466,

vii, 186n, viii, p. 32 and pp. 42-3n, x, p. 226 and p. 451, xi, p. 213

and 371n; W.E.K. Anderson, ed., The Journal of Sir Walter Scott

(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), pp. 162-3, 190-2, 315-7, 496-8,

578-80, 598-600; J.G. Lockhart, The Life of Sir Walter Scott (6 vols.,

Edinburgh: T. & A. Constable [Robert Cadell], 1902), vi, pp. 236-7.

The Club's visit to St Andrews and Magus Moor provides an

interesting window on to contemporary attitudes to memorials:

'four or five well dressed country people came to view the spot

[of Sharp's murder, marked out by white stones in a clearing].

Mr Thomson of Charleton went near to where they were, and

heard one of them say, 'It is right to mark places like this, to keep

folk in mind o' sic things' [Remarks on the Blair Adam Estate , xxi].

Adam merely recorded that 'Dunfermline was the object of

another meeting.'

ODNB, 1, pp. 94-5.

Ibid, 19, pp. 347-8 and 341-7. Adam was a close associate of acade-

mics Dugald Stewart and John Millar (1735-1801) and corresponded

with the Whig-lawyer son of historian William Robertson (1721-93) -

my thanks to Dr Iain Hutchison for these points.

56 Robert Bruce's Bones

Ibid, 50, pp. 251-2. Adam and Shepherd would later co-sponsor

the publication of The Ragman Rolls, 1291-6 (Edinburgh: Bannatyne

Club, 1834), records of the Bruce-Balliol medieval royal succession

rivalry. Adam also penned Two Short Essays on the Study of History

and on General Reading (Blair Adam Press, 1836) [Catalogue of the

Blair Adam Library (London, 1836)].

ODNB, 12, pp. 48-51.

Ibid, 54, pp. 544-7.

Ibid, 54, pp. 531-2.

Adam relates that the group would gather in June on a Friday,

take a historical trip on Saturday, attend church at Cleish (an

Established church parish appropriated in the past to Dunfermline

Abbey) near Blair Adam on Sunday then walk and talk locally

before another trip on Monday and back to Edinburgh for court

business on Tuesday.

In 1806 Adam had been voted Chair of the Fife County meeting

at Cupar to select a Parliamentary candidate through the support

of 'friends of Robert Ferguson,' one of those standing. Ferguson's

nomination was opposed because of his parole from France (with

the earl of Elgin); Adam defended him successfully, describing

him as 'his incomparable friend whom he had known since youth'

[Caledonian Mercury, 11 Dec. 1806].

Grierson, ed., Letters of Sir Walter Scott, v, p. 103. This was prob-

ably a reference to Elgin's divorce or the marbles controversy

(rather than Elgin's condition or physical appearance).

TNA HO102/29, Home Office: Scotland – Letters and Papers, /124,

/141 (10-11 March 1818); NAS GB234/HR159/3, Dunfermline Parish

Heritors' Records, Minute Book 1815-37, 7 March, 10 March and

20 March 1818.

NRAS 1454, Blair Adam Archive, Series 8/2232, 15 Feb. 1818,

'letter of Elgin to Sir Charles Halkett Bart. re. a dispute between

Commissioner Adam and the Earl'; 8/2245, 'a circular letter

to members of the Western District of the County of Fife of 17

February 1818' – this detailed the dispute between Elgin, Adam

and the County committee and summoned a fresh Western District

meeting for 2 March 1818 in Dunfermline, but noted that Elgin

now refused to take any further part in discussions.

Caledonian Mercury, 4 August1818. The Stirling district also

included Inverkeithing and Culross with the 'head' burgh role

rotating among the group as the seat of general election voting by

burgh delegates (chosen by each burgh council) to select an M.P.:

council and delegate influence was thus often violently competed

Michael A. Penman IRSS 34 (2009) 57

for, with bribery, intimidation and the timely arrest of rival candi-

dates for 'debt' common-place [K.J. Logue, Popular Disturbances in

Scotland, 1780-1815 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1979), pp. 128-33,

p. 217].

Caledonian Mercury, 24 February 1818; Edinburgh Star, 24 Feb.

1818; A.W. Cornelius, An Account of the Family of Beveridge in

Dunfermline (Edinburgh, 1890). For fuller accounts see: Henderson,

Annals of Dunfermline, pp. 595-8; Chalmers, Historical and Statistical

Account of Dunfermline, i, pp. 138-40.

E.g. Caledonian Mercury, 11 Nov. 1819; Edinburgh Star , 9 Nov. 1819;

Scotsman, 13 Nov. 1819; The Times , 12 Nov. 1819; Henderson, Annals

of Dunfermline, pp. 602-5; Chalmers, Historical and Statistical Account

of Dunfermline, i, pp. 140-6. There was no wider reaction from the

establishment London press in 1818 or 1819: see The Annual Register

or a View of the History, Politics and Literature for the Year 1818

(London, 1819) and 1819 (London, 1820) - neither mentioned the

find.

Checkland, The Elgins , p. 95.

TNA H0102/29, Home Office: Scotland – Letters and Papers, /126.

On 1 Aug. 1818 the Caledonian Mercury reported that this same Hunt

society had now commissioned two proposed inscriptions for such a

Bruce monument at Bannockburn, the first more strident, decrying

Edward II's intent to destroy the Scottish nation, but celebrating his

defeat by Bruce as 'The Avenger'; the second, a tamer testament to

Bruce as 'Hero' and 'Patriot.'

TNA HO102/29, Home Office: Scotland – Letters and Papers, /126;

NRAS 3955, Bruce Family, Earls of Elgin and Kincardine , /22/1/14;

Glasgow Herald, 19 Dec. 1889.

TNA HO102/29, Home Office: Scotland – Letters and Papers, /41;

NRAS 1454, Blair Adam Archive, Series 2/B. 205; NAS

GB234/HR159/3, Dunfermline Parish Heritors' Records, Minute Book

1815-37 , 4 March 1818; J. Sutherland, The Life of Sir Walter Scott

(Oxford, 1995), pp. 209-11. Scott also aspired to be a Baron of

Exchequer [Lockhart, Life of Sir Walter Scott, v, pp. 170-1].

TNA HO102/29, Home Office: Scotland – Letters and Papers, /119, 9

March 1818. On 14 March Elgin wrote again to Sidmouth arguing

that the expanded floor plan would not in fact take in all of the

sepulchre area: if account is taken of the base of St Margaret's fere-

tory shrine, which now stands outside the abbey church, Elgin was

correct [ibid, /42].

58 Robert Bruce's Bones

NAS GB234/HR159/3, Dunfermline Parish Heritors' Records, Minute

Book 1815-37, 7 March 1818; TNA HO102/29, Home Office: Scotland

– Letters and Papers, /34, 7 March 1818; NAS E.310/23, King's

Remembrancer's Letter Book, 2 Jan. 1818-30 June 1818, pp. 82, 115-7,

151; H. Jardine, Report to the Right Honourable the Lord Chief Baron and

the Hon. The Barons of His Majesty's Court of Exchequer in Scotland by the

King's Remembrancer re. the TOMB of KING ROBERT THE BRUCE

and the Cathedral Church of Dunfermline (Edinburgh, 1821), p. 27.

Grierson ed., Letters of Sir Walter Scott, vi, 165; W. Partington, ed.,

Sir Walter's Postbag (London: John Murray, 1932), p. 220, 15 January

1826.

Jardine, Report …; idem, 'Extracts from the Report…'; National

Museum of Scotland Library, Edinburgh, Society of Scottish

Antiquaries Minutes, 9 Apr. 1805 to 28 May 1827, 137, 142-204 passim

[Jardine as Chair 1817-20], Bruce re-interment report at 204. The

SAS's foundation had provoked concern in some quarters that it

would 'call the attention of the Scots to the ancient honours and

constitution of their independent country' [SAS Secretary William

Smellie, 1792, cited in Cant, 'David Steuart Erskine,' p. 16].

NRAS 1454, Blair Adam Archive, Series 2/219 (i), 9 May 1819.

P. Garside, 'Scott and the Regalia,' in J.H. Alexander and D.

Hewitt, eds., Scott and His Influence (Occasional papers / Association

for Scottish Literary Studies), pp. 220-33.

NAS E.349/7, The Regalia Book, pp. 3-5, p. 8, 28, 32, 41, 67. For

the commemorative sketch see:

http://www.walterscott.lib.ed.ac.uk/portraits/paintings/images/regal

iasketch.html. In 1822, poems of welcome for the king would stress

'the crown that circled Bruce's helm…the sword that rescued

Bruce's realm…' and that the new monarch had 'blended Bruce's

line' dynastically and racially [R. Mudie, A Historical Account of His

Majesty's Visit to Scotland (Edinburgh, 1822), pp. 65-7].

Kidd, 'The Canon of Patriotic Landmarks in Scottish History,'

pp. 5-6; Sutherland, Life of Sir Walter Scott, pp. 208-39. See also

Papers Relative to the Regalia of Scotland, presented by William Bell

(Bannatyne Club, Edinburgh, 1829).

Penman, 'King Robert Bruce (1274-1329),' pp. 34-5; G. Morton,

Unionist Nationalism: Governing Urban Scotland, 1830-1860 (East

Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1999), chs. 6-7.

Statistical Account of Scotland, 1791-99, x, p. 279.

E. King, 'The Material Culture of William Wallace,' in Cowan,

ed., The Wallace Book, pp. 117-35, at p. 127. See also V. Honeyman,

''A Very Dangerous Place?': Radicalism in Perth in the 1790s,' SHR ,

lxxxvii (2008), pp. 278-305.

Michael A. Penman IRSS 34 (2009) 59

Chalmers, Historical and Statistical Account of Dunfermline , i,

pp. 327-40 [population], pp. 341-52 [agriculture], pp. 353-85 [manu-

factures]; J.E. Cookson, Lord Liverpool's Administration: the Crucial

Years, 1815-1822 (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1975), ch. 2;

J.H. Treble, 'The Standard of Living of the Working Class,' in

T.M. Devine and R. Mitchison, eds., People and Society in Scotland,

volume I: 1760-1830 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1988), pp. 188-226;

W. Hamish Fraser, 'Patterns of Protest,' in ibid, pp. 292-309.

Dunfermline's relative poverty is reflected in its lower electoral

qualification of £4 in annual rentals compared to that of Edinburgh

or Glasgow at £15 to £20 [D.G. Barrie, Police in the Age of

Improvement: Police development and the civic tradition in Scotland,

1775 -18 65 (Uffculme: Willan Publishing, 2008), p. 94].

L. Eriksonas, 'The National Hero: a Scottish Contribution,'

Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism, xxx (2003), pp. 83-101,

at p. 93.

Henderson, Annals of Dunfermline, pp. 377-8; J. Cannon,

Parliamentary Reform, 1640-1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1972), p. 125; Logue, Popular Disturbances in Scotland, pp. 131-

3; H.W. Meikle, Scotland and the French Revolution (London: Walton

Press, 1912), pp. 99 n1, 221; R.M. Sunter, Patronage and Politics in

Scotland, 1707-1832 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1986), ch. 12.

A. Fletcher, A Memoir concerning the origin and Progress of the Reform

Proposed in the Internal Government of the Royal Burghs of Scotland which

was first brought under Public Discussion in 1782 (Edinburgh, 1819),

part iii., pp. 13-4, p. 62, 72, 84, pp. 101-2, 113-4.

M.I. Thomis and P. Holt, Threats of Revolution in Britain 1789-1848

(London: Macmillan, 1977), pp. 19-20; Meikle, Scotland and the

French Revolution, pp. 187-8.

NAS B20/13/16, Dunfermline Burgh Council Minutes 1812-20,

10 March 1819; Henderson, Annals of Dunfermline , p. 591. Wilson's

Masonic party had made matters worse by clashing with the Kirk

Session and Presbytery in April 1818 over the ringing of church

bells and abuse of church officials [NAS CH2/592/10, Dunfermline

Abbey Church Kirk Session Minutes 1799-1820, pp. 374-83].

Black Dwarf, 11, ii, 18 March 1818, p. 176.

S. Hogg and A. Noble, eds., The Canongate Burns (Edinburgh:

Canongate Books, 2001), pp. 464-73; McIlvanney, Burns the Radical ,

pp. 214-5.

Black Dwarf, 17, ii, 29 April 1818, p. 274; Caledonian Mercury,

31 July 1802; Thorne, ed., House of Commons, iv, pp. 178-9; Cookson,

Lord Liverpool's Administration, pp. 166-7.

60 Robert Bruce's Bones

Blackwood's Magazine, xii (March 1818), p. 691; ibid, xxxiii

(December 1819), pp. 297-305; Morton, Unionist Nationalism, chs. 1

and 3. See also now C. Kidd, Union and Unionisms: Political Thought

in Scotland, 1500-2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

2008), pp. 138-41.

C.A. Whatley, 'Royal Day, People's Day: The Monarch's

Birthday in Scotland, c.1660-1860' in R. Mason and N. Macdougall,

eds., People and Power in Scotland: Essays in Honor of T.C. Smout

(Edinburgh: John Donald, 1992), pp. 170-88.

For this general background see: Cookson, Lord Liverpool's

Administration, pp. 166-7, 190-4; C.A. Whatley, Scottish Society 1707-

1830: Beyond Jacobitism, towards industrialisation (Manchester:

Manchester University Press, 2000), chs. 6-7.

House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, 1819(571), Select Committee

on Petitions from Royal Burghs in Scotland: Report, Minutes of Evidence,

Appendix (1817-19), pp. 32-5, pp. 429-58.

NRAS 1454, Blair Adam Archive, Series 2/B.199, Gregory to

Adam 26 July 1818; /B.211, Adam Duff to Adam 3 Aug. 1818;

/B.224, Jardine to Adam 30 Aug. 1819; Henderson, Annals of

Dunfermline, p. 603. The proximity of George III's birthday, 4 June,

to the anniversary of the death of Robert Bruce, 7 June, and the

anniversary of Bannockburn, 23-4 June – which was also close to

the date of the battle of Waterloo, 18 June, might also have influ-

enced decisions about when not to inspect and/or re-inter the royal

remains. In the same way, summer 1818 had perhaps been avoided

during the general election.

Caledonian Mercury, 27 Sept. 1819.

NRAS 1454, Blair Adam Archive, Series 2/225 Wilson to Adam,

20 Nov. 1819. A dam's reticence about his Club's visit to Dunfermline

Abbey c.1818-c.1822 – recor ded undated and without details in

his estate book of 1834 – perhaps hints at the tensions of the time:

see above n.39.

Ibid, 20 Nov. 1819.

Scots Magazine, iv, 274-6 (Sept. 1819).

It is difficult to pinpoint figures for poor relief in Dunfermline at

this time. NAS CH2/592/10, Dunfermline Abbey Church Kirk Session

Minutes 1799-1820, 409-53, for Jan. to Dec. 1819, certainly seem to

include an increase in the number of people seeking relief but

mostly widows and only one 'young man out of employ'; but on

at least three occasions in this period the Session did vote extra

payments to those on the poor roll, of 3/- to 7/-, hinting at height-

ened distress.

Michael A. Penman IRSS 34 (2009) 61

Black Dwarf, 1, v, 27 Nov. 1819, p. 35.

E.g. BL Add. MSS. 38,280, Liverpool Papers vol. xci, 25 Sept.-

13 Nov. 1819, f. 139 [Christie], f.149 [radical meeting at Warkworth,

Oct. 1819], f. 197 [weavers meeting in Ardrossan, Oct. 1819]; ibid,

Add. MSS. 38,279, Liverpool Papers Aug.-24 Sept 1819, f. 128

[Black Dwarf spreading in Glasgow]; TNA HO102/29, Home Office:

Scotland – Letters and Papers, /50 [alarm from Inverness militia

captain, 21 Nov. 1819], /88 [Glasgow meeting, 1 Nov. 1819];

Lockhart, Life of Sir Walter Scott, vi, pp. 133-5 [alarms at agitation in

Northumberland and west Scotland; Scott's role in raising militia].

P. Beresford Ellis and S. Mac A'Ghobhainn, The Scottish

Insurrection of 1820 (London: Gollancz, 1970); Shepherd was drafted

on to the Scottish bench to advise on applying English treason law

to the prosecution of sedition [Fraser, 'Patterns of Protest,' p. 286].

Statistical Account of Scotland, 1791-99, x,179, pp. 308-13;

New Statistical Account of Scotland, IX: Fife and Kinross (Edinburgh:

W. Blackwood, 1845), pp. 888-96. In 1845, a mob of 2,000

Dunfermline weavers would smash a factory and owner's house.

ODNB, 23, pp. 673-5.

NRAS 1454, Blair Adam Archive, Series 2/B.199 and /231, i-iii,

8 Oct., 27 Oct. and 30 Oct. 1819; ibid , Walter Scott Box, B.6/24,

Scott to Adam 23 Aug. 1818.

Jardine, 'Extracts from the Report…,' p. 438; Henderson, Annals

of Dunfermline, p. 602.

Sir Joseph Ayloffe, 'An Account of the Body of King Edward the

First, as it appeared on opening his Tomb in the Year 1774,'

Archaeologia, 3 (1775), pp. 376-413.

There was widespread reaction to Charlotte's death as the heir

to the throne, with prolonged public mourning; the Rvd Andrew

Thomas's refusal to commemorate her passing at St George's,

Edinburgh, brought strong condemnation [L. Colley, 'The

Apotheosis of George III: Loyalty, Royalty and the British Nation,

1760-1820,' Past & Present, 102 (1984), pp. 94-129, at 115 and n;

A. Taylor, 'Down with the Crown': British Anti-Monarchism and Debates

about Royalty since 1790 (London, 1999), pp. 29-30]. Antiquarian

circles – and especially Dr Gregory - may also have been aware of

the botched job and damage done in examining and skull-casting

the remains of poet Robert Burns when his tomb was opened in

1815 (as it would be again in 1834) [Morning Chronicle , 10 Apr. 1834].

For the civil list reductions see Cookson, Lord Liverpool's

Administration, pp. 130-50.

62 Robert Bruce's Bones

NAS GB234/HR159/3, Dunfermline Parish Heritors' Records, Minute

Book 1815-37, 28 Nov. 1818 to 7 Jan. 1819. According to Burn, Elgin

had 'not taken any step to remedy' the flooding and his 'communi-

cations only add to the delay.' In December 1818, the heritors'

committee felt compelled to 'very reluctantly recommend to the

heritors to recall the conditional grant of the vault to Lord Elgin.'

The earl conspicuously did not return to a heritors' meeting in

person until August 1821 when the division of seats in the newly

completed church began; this was a church, though, which even after

Burn had fitted a better drain still stood flooded on 28 January 1820.

Mudie, Historical Account of the King's Visit; J. Prebble, The King's

Jaunt: George IV in Scotland, 1822 (London: Collins, 1988).

J. Sharpe, Remember, Remember: A Cultural History of Guy Fawke's

Night (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008), chs. 3-4;

G. Donaldson, Scotland: James V – James VII (Edinburgh: Oliver &

Boyd, 1965), pp. 383-4.

100

For the details of 5 Nov. 1819 which follow see: Henderson,

Annals of Dunfermline, pp. 600-3; Chalmers, Historical and Statistical

Account of Dunfermline, i, pp. 140-6; Jardine, 'Extracts from the

Report...'; TNA E.306 Register of Orders of Barons of Exchequer on

Treasury and Revenue Business, 13 Dec. 1820 to 21 Feb. 1822, 245-6.

For Shepherd as Lord Chief Baron see: NAS GD51/6/2029/ 1-2.

101

Thorne, ed., House of Commons, iv, pp. 489-90.

102

ODNB, 38, pp. 641-2.

103

NRAS 1454, Blair Adam Archive, Series 2/231, iii, 30 Oct. 1819.

104

Dunfermline did not have its own newspaper until the 1830s so

the government-subsidised Edinburgh papers had to be consulted.

At the laying of the church foundation stone in March 1818, Elgin

had buried a box containing newspapers of the day plus a list of all

the heritors holding lands worth £100 or more.

105

BL Add. MSS. 78,763, Mackintosh Papers, f. 97-8, letter from

William Adam 31 Oct. 1819. Gregory also begged permission for his

sons to attend the reburial so that they might boast of 'meeting' such

a great figure as Bruce.

106

NAS E.310/26, King's Remembrancer's Letter Book 6 July – 9 Dec.

1819, 272; NRAS 1454, Blair Adam Archive, Series 2/231, i-ii;

Gregory, 'Exhumation and re-interment of Robert Bruce,' pp. 138-

42. Jardine, however, emphasized that the indisposed Adam 'had

taken a great interest in the matter, and much trouble in making the

previous arrangements for this interesting investigation' ['Extracts

from the Report…,' p. 459].

107

Ibid, p. 445.

Michael A. Penman IRSS 34 (2009) 63

108

Caledonian Mercury, 11 Nov. 1819.

109

Henderson, Annals of Dunfermline, pp. 602-5.

110

TNA HO102/29, Home Office: Scotland – Letters and Papers, /29,

1 March 1818.

111

NRAS 1454, Blair Adam Archive, Series 2/B.177, letter to Adam,

28 July 1818.

112

Other relics included: braids, cloth and threads of gold, a

number of which were popularly held to have been given to 'clan

chiefs' c.1818-19 [ PSAS, lxiii (1928-9), p. 15 and lxxxviii (1953-5),

p. 22, 30; Scotsman 23 May 1964]; a rib [Museum of Royal College

of Surgeons, London; Glasgow Herald, 27 June 1914]; teeth [e.g. now

at the Abbot's House Museum, Dunfermline]; toe bones [Paton

private collection in Dunfermline, then Hunterian Collection,

Glasgow] and finger bones [1. Museum of Scotland, 2. Edinburgh

University Department of Anatomy Museum, 3. Bruce chapel,

St Conan's Kirk, Lochawe]; coffin fragments [Bridge of Allan

private collection; Pall Mall Gazette, 29 Nov. 1898] and nails and

marble sarcophagus pieces [NMSL, Society of Scottish Antiquaries,

Minutes 9 Apr. 1805-28 May 1827, p. 191 (Dec. 1819)]. Jardine

recorded that some of the burial shroud cloth fragments had been

preserved between glass for the Society of Antiquaries Museum

[Ibid, 204; Jardine, Report…, 38]; more pieces of Bruce's 'robe' were

reported in the estate of the Bruces of Arnot [Glasgow Herald , 21 July

1892]. It is possible, too, that a sprinkling of these relic types also

remained on public display at Dunfermline Abbey: '…like many

others, I made a pilgrimage to this tomb. We all respectfully

contemplated the relics of King Robert' [Anonymous, Historical

and Literary Tour of a foreigner in England and Scotland in two volumes

(London, 1825), p. 324].

113

Jardine, 'Extracts from the Report…,' pp. 445-6; Gregory,

'Exhumation and re-interment of Robert Bruce,' pp. 141-2. Jardine

noted that workmen preparing the chamber had uncovered a box

containing entrails a few metres to the north-east; these were also

buried in Bruce's new coffin.

114

TNA E.306, Register of Orders of Barons of Exchequer on Treasury and

Revenue Business, 13 Dec. 1820 to 21 Feb. 1822, p. 130 [John Bonar,

builder, paid]; NAS E.310/28, King's Remembrancer's Letter Book

21 June 1820-27 Jan. 1821, pp. 3, 212 [Jardine's payments of a five

guinea reward to the plate finders and for costs of engravings];

Daily News, 28 May 1847; 'Donations to the Museum,' PSAS,

viii, pp. 413-4; T.B. Johnston, 'The Story of the Fabrication of the

"Coffin-Plate" said to have been found in the tomb of King Robert

Bruce in Dunfermline Abbey,' PSAS, xii (1878), pp. 466-71; Jardine,

64 Robert Bruce's Bones

'Extracts from the Report…,' p. 446 [with image]; Henderson,

Annals of Dunfermline, p. 605; K. Pearson, 'The Skull of Robert the

Bruce, King of Scotland, 1274-1329,' Biometrika, 16, 3/4 (Dec. 1924),

pp. 253-73, photograph plate VII. Andrew Mercer wrote

Dunfermline Abbey – a Poem (1819) and A History of Dunfermline (1828).

115

Caledonian Mercury, 26 February 1818.

116

Henderson, Annals of Dunfermline, pp. 559-61; Gregory,

'Exhumation and re-interment of Robert Bruce,' p. 141. This was

believed at that time to have been the original plate which marked

Bruce's tomb: but might this not have been placed upon what was

believed to be that grave during a re-ordering of the choir at any

time c.1332-c.1750?

117

Henderson, Annals of Dunfermline, p. 602, also notes that spilt

pitch was used to light torches for the burgh's New Year celebrations

of 1820, 'an honour to glorious Bruce.' Another later local historian

asserted that few Dunfermline townsmen could afford the taxed

Edinburgh papers to read news of the discovery and were depen-

dent on the burgh's reading club for access to such publications

[A. Stewart, Reminiscences of Dunfermline and Neighbourhood

(Edinburgh, 1886), p. 31].

118

Fraser, 'The Tomb of the Hero King,' pp. 161-2, 172-6;

Boardman, 'Dunfermline as a Royal Mausoleum,' p. 150. However,

for a reassessment of the abbey as a royal burial ground and the

possibility that the 1818 r emains may be that of the similarly battle-

scarred Malcolm III, interred before the altar during the miraculous

Translation of his wife, St Margaret, to a new tomb in 1250, see

M. Penman, 'The development of the cult centre and royal

mausoleum of Dunfermline' (forthcoming). In 1856, Edinburgh

archaeological scholars did re-date the Elgin relic of 'Bruce's

helmet,' to the Cromwellian period [Chalmers, Historical and

Statistical Account of Dunfermline, ii, pp. 202-3].

119

Caledonian Mercury, 11 Nov. 1819.

120

NRAS 1454, Blair Adam Archive, Series 2/225 Wilson to Adam,

20 Nov. 1819; NAS E.342, Crown Buildings and Works, 1711-1838,

/34, Wilson to Jardine, 24 June 1820 [Bannockburn Day] re. collec-

tion of bones and removal of earth near St Margaret's tomb.

121

Henderson, Annals of Dunfermline, 609; Grierson, ed., Letters of

Sir Walter Scott, vii, p. 280. That Scott was aware of the significance

of historical dates in commemorative acts is suggested by his delay

of publication of volume one of Tales of My Landlord in 1818 un til

4 June, George III's birthday [Sutherland, Life of Sir Walter Scot,

pp. 209-11], and the timing of the first pageant of the Royal visit of

1822, the procession of the regalia from Edinburgh Castle to

Michael A. Penman IRSS 34 (2009) 65

Holyrood, to fall upon George IV's birthday, 12 Aug. [Prebble,

King's Jaunt, pp. 216-7]. Scott also inquired in 1830 about a 'Bruce

sword' held at Deuchar in Fife [Grierson, ed., Letters of Sir Walter

Scott, xi, p. 453]. The London Examiner , 30 August 1818, reported

that another 'sword of Bruce' was presented to Grand Duke Michael

of Russia at Drummond Castle. The Elgin Bruce sword had been

gifted by the Crown to Robert I's illegitimate son, Robert Bruce of

Clackmannan [Chalmers, Historical and Statistical Account of

Dunfermline, i, pp. 161-3].

122

NAS B20/13/16, Dunfermline Burgh Council Minutes, 1812-1820.

The Council would also send loyal addresses to the Crown in

February and December 1820, at a time of 'unexampled crisis,'

and then an unsuccessful appeal in Aug. 1822 for the King to visit

Dunfermline during his stay in Scotland.

123

Caledonian Mercury, 11 November 1819. As early as 22 February

1818 the Barons had promised to provide inscribed stones with the

names of all kings whose graves could be identified [NAS E.310/23,

King's Remembrancer's Letter Book 2 Jan. 1818-30 June 1818, pp.115-7].

124

'Here amidst the ruins of the old, in building a new church, in

the year 1818, the grave of Robert Bruce, King of Scots, of immortal

memory, being accidentally opened, and his remains recognised by

sure tokens, with pious duty were again committed to the earth by

people of this town. A distant generation, 489 years after his death,

erected this monument to that great hero and excellent King, who

with matchless valour in war, and wisdom in peace, by his own

energy and persevering exertions, re-established the ruined and

almost hopeless state of Scotland, long cruelly oppressed by an

inveterate and powerful enemy, and happily avenged the oppres-

sion, and restored the ancient liberty and glory of his country.'

[NRAS 1454, Blair Adam Archive, Series 2/231 ii, Gregory to

Adam re. 'my Thundering Inscription for Bannockburn';

Henderson, Annals of Dunfermline, pp. 602-3]. The Whig Circulation

Club of Edinburgh also proposed an inscription, adapting Robert

Burns: 'Here was deposited/in the year 1329,/the mortal part/of

the immortal Bruce,/one of the bravest and best/of the Scottish

Kings./Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled,/Scots wham Bruce has

often led,/Bruce wha frae a foe ne'er fled,/ The friend of Liberty./

Scotsmen, here approach the Grave/Of Bruce the Hero, good and

brave,/ Who fought his native land to save,/ By Death or Victory./

Scotsmen o'er the flowing bowl,/ Sing his praise without

controul,/Drink a glass with heart and soul,/ To Bruce and Liberty.'

[A. Duncan, Miscellaneous Poems Extracted from the Records of the

Circulation Club at Edinburgh (Edinburgh 1818), pp. 3-4].

125

Scots Magazine, ii, 580 (June 1818).

66 Robert Bruce's Bones

126

Caledonian Mercury, 11 Oct. 1821; NAS GB234/HR159/8,

Dunfermline Parish Heritors' Records, Minute Book 1815-37, 1 July-26

Aug. 1819.

127

L. Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837 (New Haven &

London: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 21-6, 342-54. Was this

a conscious reflection of the majority (and Crown) opinion against

Catholic Emancipation? It is striking that while all other known

royal tombs were embraced within the new church walls, the

marble base of the old abbey's pilgrimage shrine of St/Queen

Margaret remained safely outside.

128

M. Ash, The Strange Death of Scottish History (Edinburgh: Ramsay

Head Press, 1980), pp. 9-10.

129

Morton, Unionist Nationalism, pp. 156-72; Scots Magazine, ii, 282

(March 1818) [a 60' high monument to Burns in Edinburgh from

subscriptions begun in Bombay], iv, 184 (Feb. 1819), 336 (April

1819) and 466 (May 1819); T. Clifford, ed., Designs of Desire:

Architectural and ornament prints and drawings 1500-1850 (Edinburgh:

National Galleries of Scotland,1999), pp. 258, 293; J.A. Symington,

ed., Some Unpublished Letters of Sir Walter Scott: from the collection of

the Brotherton Library (Oxford: Blackwell, 1932), pp. 172-84 [letters

of Sir William Adam to Lord Melville re. 'national architecture'

style of Scott monument proposals].

130

Glasgow Herald, 27 October 1845.

131

Chalmers, Historical and Statistical Account of Dunfermline , i,

p. 146n.

132

National Gallery of Scotland (Edinburgh), John Duncan Bequest

1946: D4252/17, reproduced in Clifford, ed., Designs of Desire, p. 301

[Paton image]; ODNB, 43, pp. 62-3; Scotsman, 7 March 2004. Paton

snr. kept a museum of antiquities including 'a table, once the prop-

erty of Robert the Bruce, with the date 1310' [Chalmers, Historical

and Statistical Account of Dunfermline, i, pp. 164-5]. A David Paton

also ran a printing press and published as a local historian

[Henderson, Annals of Dunfermline, p. 652]. In 1849, the heritors

sought extra funds from government to pay for 'what [they] have

for so long a time been led to expect…[but which had been] from

some accidental cause overlooked,' a Bruce monument; by 1857

the heritors' memory of the promises of the Exchequer in 1819

spoke to an 'understanding that the Barons were to occupy it by a

Royal Gallery…' [NAS GB234/HR159/4, Dunfermline Parish Heritors

Records, Minute Book 1838-82, 20 Nov. 1849, 7 May 1857].

133

Chalmers, Historical and Statistical Account of Dunfermline, ii, p.401.

134

Colley, Britons , pp. 220-42; eadem, 'Apotheosis of George III.'

Michael A. Penman IRSS 34 (2009) 67

135

Henderson, Annals of Dunfermline, p. 550 [king's birthday at

Dunfermline, 4 June 1802], p. 565 [king's jubilee, 25 October 1809].

136

Ibid, p. 556 [a 'general illumination' at Dunfermline with white

and black candles to mark the death of Nelson at the victory of

Trafalgar]; A. Yarrington, The Commemoration of the Hero, 1800-1864:

Monuments to the British Victors of the Napoleonic Wars (New York and

London: Garland, 1988); A. McNairn, Behold the Hero: General Wolfe

and the Arts in the Eighteenth Century (Liverpool, 1997); R. Wrigley

and M. Craske, eds., Pantheons: Transformations of a Monumental Idea

(Stroud: Ashgate, 2004), Introduction, pp. 5-9; L. Jordonova,

'Marking Time,' in R. Hoock, ed., History, Commemoration and

National Preoccupation: Trafalgar 1805-2005 (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2007), ch. 1; Colley, 'Apotheosis of George III,'

pp. 100-6.

137

Henderson, Annals of Dunfermline, p. 518 [20 May, a general fast

at Dunfermline in 1788 to mark the completion of the 'successful

Revolution' of 1688]; R. Quinault, 'The Cult of the Centenary,

c.1784-1914,' Historical Research, 71 (1998), pp. 303-23, at p. 305.

138

R. Finlay, 'Heroes, Myths and Anniversaries in Modern

Scotland,' Scottish Affairs , 18 (1997), pp. 108-25; W. Graham, Robert

Bruce and John Knox (Edinburgh, 1873); J.B. Mackie, The Glen Library:

Dunfermline Men of Mark, #5 – Robert Bruce (Dunfermline, 1910),

p. 13 - 'if there had been no Bruce, Scotland could never have had a

Knox or a Burns.' Robert Paterson (d.1801), a borders stonemason

and member of a Covenanting sect, the Cameronians, maintained

monuments to seventeenth century religious martyrs and inspired

Scott's Old Mortality (1816) [ODNB, 43, p. 26]; my thanks to

Dr Ben Marsh [Stirling] for this reference.

139

For some comparative studies see: F. Choary, The Invention of the

Historic Monument, trans. L.M. O'Connell (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2001); P. Nora, ed., Realms of Memory: the

Construction of the French Past, vol. III – Symbols, trans. L.D. Kritzman

(New York: Columbia University Press, 1998); D.A. Bell, The Cult

of the Nation in France: Inventing Nationalism, 1680-1800 (Cambridge,

Mass.; London: Harvard University Press, 2001); B. Schwartz,

Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of National Memory (Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 2000); P. Dabrowski, Commemorations

and the Shaping of Modern Poland (Bloomington: Indiana University

Press, 2004); L. Eriksonas, National Heroes and National Identities:

Scotland, Norway and Lithuania (Brussels: P.I.E.-P. Lang, 2004);

P.A. Pickering and A. Tyrell, eds., Contested Sites: Commemoration,

Memorial and Popular Politics in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Aldershot:

Ashgate, 2004); B. Melman, The Culture of History: English Uses of the

Past 1800-1953 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006).

68 Robert Bruce's Bones

140

J.F. McCaffrey, Scotland in the Nineteenth Century (London:

Macmillan 1998), passim; Quinault, 'Cult of the Centenary,' pp.

321-3.

141

R.J. Finlay, 'Queen Victoria and the Cult of Scottish Monarchy,'

in E.J. Cowan and R.J. Finlay, eds., Scottish History: The Power of the

Past (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2002), ch. 10; Taylor,

'Down with the Crown,' ch. 1. Victoria was apparently disappointed

at the eventual brass relief effigy installed at Dunfermline over

Bruce's grave, writing to the then earl of Elgin and expressing her

preference for a monumental equestrian statue; my thanks to

His Grace the 11

Earl of Elgin for this information in conversation.

142

Kidd, 'Sentiment, race and revival,' pp. 110-113.

143

Blackwood's Magazine, xxviii (July 1819), pp. 377-86 and xxvix

(Aug. 1819), pp. 509-11; Cookson, The British Armed Nation, p. 151.

144

Cant, 'David Steuart Erskine,' pp. 17-25; Eriksonas, 'The

National Hero: A Scottish Contribution,' pp. 85-91.

145

Morton, Unionist Nationalism, p. 172.

146

Kidd, 'Sentiment, race and revival', pp. 118-9.

147

Glasgow Herald, 16 March 1886.

148

Ibid, 6 Aug. 1887, 19 Dec. 1889. Elgin also loaned the Bruce

Sword for the Wallace Monument foundation ceremony in 1861

[Caledonian Mercury, 25 June 1861] and had attended a rally for the

monument in 1856 where his speech emphasized Wallace's achieve-

ments over Bruce's and the Anglo-Scottish Union of equals in 1707,

facilitated by the Wars of Independence [ibid, 25 June 1856].

149

Scots Magazine, ii, 375 (Oct. 1818), reported that the Barons of

Exchequer had agreed to fund repairs to Linlithgow Palace 'as a

great many constantly resort there to see the curiosities of the place.'

Reid had first been appointed Architect and Surveyor to his Majesty

in Scotland in 1808 but played no apparent role in monitoring the

fabric, ruins and royal relics at Dunfermline Abbey before c.1829:

Scotland's Ancient Monuments Act of principled conservation and

preservation would be passed in 1882 [Fawcett, 'Robert Reid and

the Early Involvement of the State,' p. 272-6].

150

L. Colley, 'Whose Nation? Class and National Consciousness in

Britain 1750-1830,' Past & Present,113 (1986), pp. 97-117, at pp.106-10.

151

Morton, Unionist Nationalism , ch. 7, image at p. 183, detail from

SCRAN at ID. 000-000-029-181-C; Proposal to build a National

Memorial of the Wars of Independence under Wallace and Bruce and of its

results in the Union of England and Scotland to be erected in the Scottish

Metropolis (Edinburgh, 1859).

Michael A. Penman IRSS 34 (2009) 69

152

Glasgow Herald, 21 July 1869, 7 December 1877.

153

Liverpool Mercury, 15 September 1869; Glasgow Herald, 4 July

1870.

154

Ibid, 30 June 1870, 27-28 June 1914; I. Hamilton, 'The Bruce

Monument at Bannockburn,' History Scotland, 4, 3 (May/June 2004),

pp. 16-20.

155

Scotsman, 25-27 June 1914, 7-8 June 1929; Glasgow Herald, 23-4

['Grand Bannockburn Number'] and 28 June 1914, 6-8 June 1929

[commemorative stone at Glentrool]; Bannockburn Sex Centenary:

Official Programme (June 1914); A Masque of Edinburgh: Bruce

sex-centenary pageant, living and speaking history in thirteen scenes,

Usher Hall 28 Apr.-10 May 1929 (Edinburgh, 1929).

156

Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 26 November 1887; Glasgow Herald ,

26 November 1877.

157

Ibid, 22 September 1897 and 27 June 1898.

158

Morton, Unionist Nationalism , ch. 7; J. Coleman, 'Unionist

Nationalism in Stone? The National Wallace Monument and the

Hazards of Commemoration in Victorian Scotland,' in E.J. Cowan,

ed., The Wallace Book, pp. 151-168.

159

Blackwood's Magazine, xxx (Sept. 1819), 686; Scots Magazine, iv,

368 (Apr. 1819, Wallace monument); C. Kidd, 'The English Cult

of Wallace and the Blending of Nineteenth Century Britain,' in

Cowan, ed., The Wallace Book, pp. 144-6

160

Coleman, 'Unionist Nationalism in Stone?,' pp. 151-6; Paton's

design held by Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum, ref. 3-

SAGM9 [available through SCRAN, ID. 000-000-029-191-C].

161

Glasgow Herald, 17 November 1880; ODNB , 47, 539-41; Coleman,

'Unionist Nationalism in Stone?,' 153-64. Burns was chair of the

National Association for the Vindication of Scottish Rights within

the Union, not through independence (1853-7) and author of The

Scottish Wars of Independence (2 vols., Glasgow, 1874). Rogers was

the author of several antiquarian works including Monuments and

Monumental Inscriptions in Scotland (2 vols., London, 1871).

162

Glasgow Herald, 6 February 1869.

163

E.g., Caledonian Mercury, 30 Nov. 1818; Edinburgh Star, 23

November 1819.

164

R. Liston, 'Anatomical Remarks on the Skull,' G. Combe,

'Phrenological Remarks' and G.S. Mackenzie, 'Illustrations of

Phrenology,' in Jardine, Report…, Appendices A, B and C;

NLS Combe MSS 14 (1-15)/8, G. Combe, Remarks on the Cerebral

70 Robert Bruce's Bones

Development of King Robert Bruce (Edinburgh, 1821, extracted from

Edinburgh Phrenological Journal); W. Scott, Remarks on the Cerebral

Development of King Robert Bruce compared with his character as

appearing from History (Edinburgh, 18—, extracted from Edinburgh

Phrenological Journal, 1824, pp. 247-80). George Combe did,

however, note his analysis might not sit easily with the popular

image of Bruce [P. Lucie, 'The Sinner and the Phrenologist: Davey

Haggart meets George Combe,' Journal of Scottish Historical Studies,

27 (2007), pp. 125-49, at pp. 133-4; C.N. Cantor, 'The Edinburgh

Phrenological debate: 1803-1828' and S. Shapin, 'Phrenological

Knowledge and the Social Structure of Early Nineteenth-Century

Edinburgh,' Annals of Science, 32 (1975), pp. 195-218 and pp. 219-43;

M.H. Kaufman and S. Blomfield, 'The Museums of the Edinburgh

Phrenological Society,' Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, new series,

5 (2002), pp. 13-33. 'O'Neills' in Edinburgh sold copies of skulls cast

by the growing phrenological community: at least six Bruce skulls

can be identified – the original of Dr Gregory now in the Edinburgh

University Anatomy Museum, Walter Scott's [Abbotsford], the

Crown's in a rosewood box [Royal Collection IN2 6757], a fourth

formerly in the Society of Antiquaries' Museum and now in the

Scottish National Portrait Gallery, a fifth in Dumfries Museum and

a sixth in the Museum of Freemason's Hall, Edinburgh.

165

Edward I was measured at 6' 2" [Ayloffe, 'An Account of the

Body of King Edward,' pp. 385-6]. In 1924, the measurements of

the 1819 pa rty were challenged as inaccurate and the skeleton's

height re-estimated at 5'6" [Pearson, 'The Skull of Robert the

Bruce,' pp. 258-9].

166

This reading into the remains of perceived characteristics or

known life-events of the king has also been pursued by modern

scientific commentators, all largely content to accept the corpse's

identification: A. Keith, 'The Skull of Robert the Bruce,' Nature,

115 (1925), p. 572; Pearson, 'The Skull of Robert Bruce'; V. Møller-

Christensen and R.G. Inkster, 'Cases of leprosy and syphilis in the

osteological collection of the Department of Anatomy, University

of Edinburgh, with a note on the skull of King Robert the Bruce,'

Danish Medical Bulletin, 12 (1965), pp. 11-8; Scotsman , 27 Nov. 1996

'The Bruce's face lives again' [Pilkington-Jackson and modern

recreation image of 'noble' king]; I. MacLeod and B. Hill, Heads

and Tales: Reconstructing Faces (Edinburgh: National Museums of

Scotland, 2001), pp. 35-44 ['leper' king]; M.H. Kaufman and

W.J. MacLennan, 'King Robert the Bruce and leprosy,' Proceedings

of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, 30 (2002), pp. 75-80;

M.H. Kaufman, 'Analysis of the skull of Robert the Bruce,'

History Scotland, 8, 1, Jan/Feb 2008, pp. 22-30.

167

Penman, 'King Robert Bruce (1274-1329),' pp. 33-6.

Michael A. Penman IRSS 34 (2009) 71

168

Eriksonas, 'The National Hero: A Scottish Contribution,' p. 92.

169

E.g. G.A. Hodgson, The favourite Airs from Robert Bruce or the

Lord of the Isles (Dublin, 1820) ; D. Desnoyers, De l'operà en 1847,

à propos de Robert Bruce par G.A. Rossini (Paris, 1847); G. Redler,

The Robert Bruce Quadrilles for the Pianoforte (London, 1846); E. Wolf,

Reminiscences de Robert Bruce, opéra de G. Rossini – duo brilliante pour

le piano (Paris, 1850); H. Adolphe, Rossini's Bruce – caprice pour violin

et piano (Paris, 1877).

170

E.g. Liverpool Mercury, 25 December 1818.

17 1

Penman, 'King Robert Bruce (1274-1329),' pp. 32-8.

172

Edinburgh University Library, Laing MS, vol. II, no. 764;

Blackwood's Magazine, xxx (Sept. 1819), p. 686; Kidd, 'The English

Cult of Wallace,' pp. 144-6; G. Hughes, James Hogg: A Life

(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), p. 159. Scots

Magazine, iv, 496-9 (Dec. 1819), did publish a runner up, 'Wallace

and Bruce – A Vision' by 'A Kindly Scot' which presented a 'simple

strain of Scottish feeling…to the glory of our ancient kingdom'

with a distinct anti-Union flavour: 'Scotland's chiefs have truth and

honour sold/And bartr'd Scottish faith for gold.'

173

J. Porter, The Scottish Chiefs (1810); D. Anderson, King Robert Bruce

or the Battle of Bannockburn (1833); G. Alexander, Robert Bruce –

the Hero King of Scotland (1852); G. Aguilar, The Days of Bruce (1870);

G.A. Henty, In Freedom's Cause (1894); A. Mure Mackenzie,

Apprentice Majesty (1944); Mackenzie, though, was Secretary of the

Saltire Society.

17 4

See especially: Lord Hailes, Annals (Edinburgh, 1769-9); R. Kerr,

History of the Reign of King Robert (Edinburgh, 1811); P.F. Tytler,

History of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1828-36) and Lives of the Scottish

Worthies (3 vols., Edinburgh, 1831), i, pp. 287-416; G. Grant, The Life

of Robert Bruce: the Restorer of Scottish Independence (Dublin, 1849); R.

Chambers, A Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen (Edinburgh,

1834) revised/updated by T. Thomson (Edinburgh, 1855); A. Low,

Scottish Heroes in the Days of Wallace and Bruce (London, 1856); Burns,

Scottish War of Independence; H. Maxwell, Robert the Bruce – the Struggle

for Independence (Glasgow, 1897); A.F. Murison, Famous Scots: Robert

the Bruce (Edinburgh, 1899); A. McMillan, Mainly about Robert Bruce

– in Vindication of Scotland's Hero King (London, 1901); A. Mackay,

'Robert Bruce,' in Dictionary of National Biography, iii, 117-28

(London, 1908); J.E. Shearer, Fact and Fiction in the Story of

Bannockburn (Stirling, 1909); R.L. Mackie, The Story of King Robert the

Bruce (London, 1913); E.M. Barron, The Scottish War of Independence

(Glasgow, 1914); A.M. Mackenzie, Robert Bruce, King of Scots

(Edinburgh, 1935).

72 Robert Bruce's Bones

175

For popular or 'juvenile' fiction see: e.g. NLS ABS.1.203.018 (1-

26), a collection of 26 chapbooks; E.J. Cowan and M. Paterson, eds.,

Folk in Print: Scotland's Chapbook Heritage, 1750-1850 (Edinburgh:

John Donald, 2007), pp. 343-4.

176

Grierson, ed., Letters of Sir Walter Scott, iv, p. 23 and xi, p. 9;

Penman, 'King Robert Bruce (1274-1329),' pp. 31-8.

17 7

The Borestone and the Field of Bannockburn, 22 June 1889, with

speeches by Professor Blaikie and Rev. David Macrae (Stirling, 1889);

Scottish Home Rule Pamphlets: Borestone Demonstration (24 June 1893);

The Thistle, II, 17 (July 1909), pp. 181-5, 'Why we celebrate

Bannockburn Day' and Vol. II, nos. 19-20 passim (Jan.-Dec. 1910),

'The Career of Bruce'; Bannockburn Day Celebrations: Official

Programme (June 1912).

178

Glasgow Herald, 14 May and 4 Sept. 1923, 20 Jan. and 3 June

1927, 5-28 Jan. and 17 March 1928, 28-9 May 1929; Scotsman,

22 June 1961 ['bawbee for Bruce' campaign], 20 June 1964;

Hamilton, 'Bruce Monument at Bannockburn,' pp. 19-20.

See also Glasgow Herald, 20 June 1926 [Bruce stone at Annan],

12 June 1928 [Bruce memorial at Cardross], 25 June 1928

[Dumbarton flagstaff to Bruce], 20 March 1929 [Auchincruivie

Bruce memorial], 8 Feb. 1929 [Galloway Bruce monument],

28 Oct. 1929 [proposal to move Bruce's heart from Melrose to

Holyrood], and 21 Apr. 1932 [Bruce tablet at St Cuthbert's church,

Edinburgh]. My thanks to Dr Joyce Miller [Stirling] for Herald

references.

179

Finlay, 'Heroes, Myths and Anniversaries,' pp. 111-2.

180

A. Carnegie, Autobiography (London, 1920), pp. 18, 367.

Carnegie did, though, donate a bust of Robert Burns to the

Wallace monument hall of heroes [Coleman, 'Unionist Nationalism

in Stone?,' p. 165].

Michael A. Penman IRSS 34 (2009) 73

Andrew G. Newby

Since Scotland has ceased to be a nation for over a century and a half, and has become a mere 'geographical expression', under the geographical fate of close contact with a stronger power, one would suppose that the world was in no great need of having any more histories of that country 1 This reaction to Hill Burton's History of Scotland in The New York Times encapsulates the prevalent discourse on Scottish identity by the 1870s, that Scotland had subsumed its status as a nation in favour of being a mere region of a 'stronger power'. For many, this pragmatism was admirable, particularly in the context of British imperial expansion, as it demonstrated that previously competing countries could unite to achieve economic, political and cultural hegemony over nations far greater in size or in population.2 There was, nevertheless, a considerable tension bound up within the definition of that 'stronger power'. In London, and for many looking in from abroad through a London prism, it was generally presumed that Scotland was now simply a northern region of England. In Edinburgh, however, the 'stronger power' was not England, but Great Britain or indeed the British Empire, and Scotland was no more considered to have surrendered its identity than had England in consenting to form a union in 1707. This tension had been the basis for a reassertion in the 1850s of Scottish identity, coming particularly from urban elites in Edinburgh. Through popular literature, a vibrant local and national press, and, particularly in the mid-1880s, increased popular participation in all forms of politics, the question of Scotland's relationship with London and its constitutional status transformed into a much wider social and political issue in the period 1890–1914.

Michael A. Penman

A survey of articles, monographs and primary sources relevant to the study of the Scottish Wars of Independence, c.1286-c.1357, published 2003-2010.

Joseph Ayloffe

The royal warrants repeatedly issued by King Edward the Third, and his two immediate successors, directed to the treasurer and chamberlains of their exchequer, De cera renovanda circa corpus regis Edwardi primi; and the total silence of all our historians, and public records, as to a similar attention having been paid to the corpse of any other of our deceased momarchs; are circumstances, that not only indicate the high veneration in which King Edward the First was held during a long series of years after his decease; but when considered, together with the strong injunctions under which, it is said, that king in his last moments laid his son, to send his heart to the Holy Land, attended by 140 knights, and to carry his remains along with the army until Scotland was reduced to obedience, gave rise to an opinion, that upon his decease a more than ordinary care was taken to preserve his body from putrefaction; and that, in subsequent times, the utmost endeavours were used for preventing its decay.

Source: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277795450_Robert_Bruce%27s_Bones_Reputations_Politics_and_Identities_in_Nineteenth-Century_Scotland

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