Page:The Complete Peerage Ed 2 Vol 2.djvu/367

 BRUCE 351 to his heirs and assigns. Having been Ambassador to England in 1600, he was, through the means of Cecil, instrumental in procuring the peace- ful accession of his King to that throne. Accordingly he was made P.C. 4 May 1603, and Master of the Rolls for life, receiving grants of the manor of Whorlton and the Abbey of Jervaulx, co. York. On 8 July 1604,0 he was a: BARON BRUCE OF KINLOSSE [S.], with rem. to heirs male of his body, whom failing, to his heirs male whatsoever jC') while on 3 May 1608 he had {v:ithout any resignation) a grant of Kinloss as a temporal Barony, under the title of LORD BRUCE OF KINLOSS [S.], ivil/i rem. to heirs male of his body, whom failing to his heirs and assigns. He was cr. M..x. Oxford, 30 Aug. 1605. He m. Magdalen, da. of Alex- ander Clerk, of Balbirnie, co. Fife. He d. 14 Jan. 1610/1, aged 62, and was bur. in the Rolls chapel, Chancery Lane, London. M.I., in which he is st}4ed '■'■ Et Scotus et Anglus." Will dat. 9 Aug. 1610, pr. 14 Jan. 1610/1. His widow w.,9 Apr. 1616, at Abbot's Langley, Herts, Sir James Fullerton, 1st Gent, of the Bedchamber, who d. s.p., and was bur. 3 Jan. 1 630/1, in Westm. Abbey. She survived him. II. 161 1. 2. Edward (Bruce), Lord Kinloss and Baron Bruce of Kinlosse [S.], 2nd('=) but ist surv. s. and h. K.B. June 1 6 10, being then a Gent, of the Bedchamber. Having (when (^) As to the mode of creation of this barony and that of Home of Berwick [S.] see note iuh George, Earl of Dunbar [1605]. C") His description therein being '■'' Edivardm Bruce, Miles, Rotulorum Magister." The reason why the Lord Kinloss (of 1602) had in 1604, another grant of a Peerage seems to have been the distrust (at that period) in the legal competency of grants of Church lands constituting temporal Lordships. There are some valuable remarks on this subject in Riddell, cap. iii, and particularly, pp. 249-255, as to this very Peerage. It there appears that as early as 1587, "Afr. Edward Bruce, Abbot of Kinloss," defended his right to sit in the House, when a petition was presented to remove therefrom " the Prelates, as having no authority from the Church and the most of them no function or charge in it at all." This right and also that to the peerage title of Lord Kinloss [S.] would appear to us, in these days, to have been settled by the charter of 2 Feb. 1601/2, but "that such was not the fact," at that date, appears from the patent of 8 July 1604, by which, after stating in the preamble that the King had determined " illustrium Baronium numerum augere^'' the grantee, under the designation (not of Lord Kinloss, but) of " Edward Bruce, Knight," is created Baron Bruce of Kinlosse [S.]. Yet, per contra, the creation of 1602 was, apparently, allowed in the " ranking " of 1606 (see previous page, note " d "), and was officially recognized in the allowance (21 July 1868) of that Peerage to the Duke of Bucking- ham and Chandos as heir of line. See "Kinloss," Barony [S.], ir. 1602. The grantee, as Riddell observes " must have been rather whimsical and vacillating in respect to his heirs, as in all human probability he must have wished his titles and lands to have gone together." This vacillation probably accounts for this third and last grant of Peerage, 3 May 1608, which was to heirs general, instead of (as in 1604) to heirs male whatsoever, thus according with the first grant (1602) of the Barony of Kinloss, and, in some degree, with the ultimate devolution of the large Yorkshire estates of the thrice fortunate grantee. ^] His elder br., Robert, living 24 Dec. 1593, d. unm. and v.p.