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Bruce Baliol, in revenge for Bruce's aid to Edward, seized Annandale, and gave it, with the castle of Lochmaben, to John Comyn; but his possession was brief, for Clifford, the English warden, retook it in the same year. The elder Bruce retired from Scotland and lived on his English estates till his death in 1304, when he was buried at Holmecultram in Cumberland. Besides his eldest son Robert the king, he left Edward, lord of Galloway [see ], killed at Dundalk in 1318; Thomas and Alexander, taken in Galloway, and executed at Carlisle by Edward's order in 1307; and Nigel, who suffered the same fate at Berwick in 1306. His daughters, Isabel, Mary, Christian, Matilda, and Margaret, all married Scotch nobles or landed men in the life of their brother, whose hands were strengthened by these alliances in his contest for the crown. A sixth daughter Elizabeth, and a seventh whose name is unknown, are of doubtful authenticity.

[Rymer's Fœdera, ii. 266, 471, 558, 605, 612; Stevenson's Documents illustrative of History of Scotland. See Index under Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick, but the references after 1295 are to his son Robert, afterwards king; Acts Parl. Scot. i. 424a, 441 a, 447 b, 448 a. There are many errors in the early Scottish writers as to the Bruce genealogy, and the repetition of the same name led to frequent confusion of different persons; but these are now corrected by the more accurate examination of the records due to Chalmers's Caledonia, Lord Hailes, and Kerr in his History of the Reign of Robert the Bruce.]  BRUCE, ROBERT VIII (1274–1329), king of Scotland, son of Robert de Bruce VII, earl of Carrick, and Marjory, daughter and heiress of Nigel, second earl of Carrick, by Marjory, daughter of Walter the Steward of Scotland, born on 11 July 1274, was descended on the father's side from a Norman baron who came with William the Conqueror to England; and on his mother's from the Celtic chiefs of Galloway, as the names of her grandfather Duncan, created earl of Carrick by William the Lion, and her father, Niel or Nigel, show. Soon after the death of her first husband, Adam de Kilconquhar, in 1271, his mother married Robert de Bruce (VII), son of the Competitor Robert de Bruce (VI), who assumed, according to Scottish custom, the title of Earl of Carrick. On the decision of the disputed succession in 1292 in favour of Baliol, and the death of his wife in the same year, the earl resigned that title to his son, and three years later acquiring, through the death of his father, the lordship of Annandale, he was afterwards known as Dominus de Annandale, while his son, the future king, was styled Earl of Carrick until his coronation in 1306. On 4 June 1295 Edward I records by a writ under his privy seal that Robert, son and heir of Robert de Bruce, senior, now deceased, had done homage for lands held of the king, and this Robert, earl of Carrick, is by another writ nominating him keeper of the castle of Carlisle called Lord of Annandale on 6 Oct. 1295, having resigned the earldom three years before. The deed of resignation, dated at Berwick on Sunday after the feast of St. Leonard (6 Nov.) 1292, was presented to Baliol at the parliament of Stirling on 3 Aug. 1293. As it was necessary that sasine of the lands should be taken by the king before he could receive the homage of the new vassal, the sheriff of Ayr was directed to take it and ascertain their extent, after which Bruce was to return and do homage. It is uncertain whether homage was ever rendered, for the disputes between Baliol and Edward had commenced, and from the first both the young Bruce and his father took Edward's side. On 24 Aug. 1296, along with the Earls of March and Angus, Robert de Brus 'le veil' (the elder) and Robert de Brus 'le jovene' (the younger), earl of Carrick, took the oaths of homage and fealty to Edward at Berwick (Ragman Rolls, 176a). A series of writs in favour of the earl shows one means by which their support was gained. A debt due by him to Edward, perhaps the old debt contracted by his father in 1281, was respited on 23 July 1293, and again on 11 Feb. and 15 Oct. 1296. By the second letter of respite it appears that the earl was about to proceed to Scotland, and by the third that he had rendered such good service that the king granted him the delay needed to admit of easy payment. His father had meantime been made keeper of the castle of Carlisle, and Baliol had retaliated by seizing Annandale, which he conferred on John Comyn, earl of Buchan. In the same year Baliol's renunciation of allegiance to the English king led to the brief campaign in which Berwick, Dunbar, Roxburgh, Edinburgh, and Stirling were taken, and on 2 Jan. 1296 the abject Baliol surrendered at Kincardine or Brechin his crown and realm to Edward. In the following year the Earl of Carrick, with other Scottish nobles, received a summons to accompany Edward to Flanders as his direct, vassals. The Scotch, like many English barons, declined to obey a summons in excess of feudal obligation, and Wallace, during Edward's absence abroad, having raised the standard of revolt, Bruce, although, according to Hemingford, he had sworn 