Bruce, Robert.

Also known as Robert I, belonged in the royal line of the Bruce family. He was born in 1274 and died in 1329. At first he took no firm stand either for Edward, King of England, or Wallace, the Scotch patriot. In 1306, he assumed the title, King of Scotland, and was crowned without opposition. Being defeated by the English King, he fled to an island north of Ireland but returned the following year and began a series of att*cks on the English. Edward I having died, Edward II came to the throne with no thirst for w*r with Scotland. But, beginning in 1310, Edward made forays into Scotland, without being able to contact the Scottish army until about 1314, when the two armies met at Bannockburn, where the English were badly defeated. The w*r continued until a truce in 1323 but, when Edward II was dethroned in 1328 in favor of his son, Edward III, Bruce seized the opportunity to declare the independence of Scotland, whereupon, Bruce became Robert I, King of Scotland. He died in 1329.

Obviously, he was a national hero, and the French Freemasons did all they could to confer Masonic honors upon him, though the records in Scotland are completely silent on the subject. All of the stories about the connection between Robert Bruce and the Freemasons or the Knights Templar or between the latter two, irrespective of Bruce, are creations of the French degree makers, who deliberately antedated by about four centuries the rise of the modern Order of Knights Templar, and who were obviously motivated by the coincidence of the Battle of Bannockburn in Scotland and the dispersion of the Templars in France. Bruce is credited with being a patron of architecture and with the introduction of Freemasonry into Scotland through the creation of the Order of Heredom (H. R. D. M.) for the reception of Knights Templar who had taken refuge in Scotland from pers*cution by the P*pe and Philip the Fair of France. According to Thory, (Acta Latomorum, Vol. I, p. 6), the following occurs in a MS. in the library of the Philosophical Rite: ”Robert Bruce, King of Scotland, under the name, Robert the First, created on the 24th of June, 1314, after the battle of Bannockburn, the Order of Saint Andrew of the Thistle, to which has been since united that of Heredom (H-D-M) for the sake of the Scotch Masons, who composed a part of the thirty thousand men with whom he had conquered an army of a hundred thousand Englishmen. He reserved, in perpetuity, to himself and his successors, the title of Grand Master. He founded the Royal Grand Lodge of the Order of H-D-M at Kilwinning, and died, full of glory and honors the 9th of July, 1329.” No credence at all can be given to that statement or to those made by Dr. George Oliver in Historical Landmarks Vol. II, pp. 12-13. Lawrie (History of Freemasonry) discredited the narration. None of the orders mentioned was heard of in Scotland or elsewhere until after 1738. See HAUTS GRADES; ROYAL ORDER OF SCOTLAND; H-R-D-M.