Elizabeth probably met Robert the Bruce, then Earl of Carrick, at the English court. Robert was a widower with a young daughter, Marjorie, from his first marriage.
She was probably around 18-years old, and Robert 28 when they married in the county of Essex, England, during 1302.
On 27 March 1306, they were crowned as King and Queen of Scots at Scone. (Think Chris Pine and Florence Pugh in 2018’s excellent “Outlaw King”). After the coronation, she is quoted as having said, “Alas Robert, we are but King and Queen of the May”. Indicating she was well aware of the merciless revenge Longshanks would immediately unleash upon the entire Bruce family, and that she compared the ceremony to children playing at kings and queens.
After the disastrous defeat of the Bruce forces at the Battle of Methven on 19 June 1306, the battered survivors withdrew to the Scottish highlands to lick their wounds. Robert then decided to send Elizabeth, along with his daughter Marjorie, his sisters Mary and Christina, and Isabel MacDuff, Countess of Buchan, who had crowned him at Scone, to the illusion of safety at Kildrummy Castle in Aberdeenshire.
English troops soon laid siege to the castle, but Elizabeth and her Ladies had already escaped. Escorted by the Earl of Atholl, and fleeing further north, the royal party hoped to sail for Scandinavia, where Robert’s eldest sister was Queen Consort to King Eric of Norway.
It was not to be.
They were dragged from the sanctuary of St. Duthac’s Chapel at Tain by William, the Earl of Ross, a kinsman of The Red Comyn whom Bruce had murdered before the altar in Dumfries earlier in 1306, and they were all sent as prisoners to England.
The Earl of Atholl was hanged and his head displayed on London Bridge. Edward Longshanks kept Elizabeth in close custody, while he had Bruce's sister Mary and Isabel MacDuff imprisoned in wooden cages hung from the walls of Roxburgh and Berwick Castles – and sent Bruce’s 9-year old daughter Marjorie to experience the less than tender mercies of a nunnery.
Elizabeth and the surviving hostages among her Ladies were finally released by Longshanks’ son, Edward II, on 29 September 1314 as part of the ransom for the Earl of Hereford who had been captured after the incredible victory won by Robert the Bruce that summer at the Battle of Bannockburn.
My little vignette, completed yesterday, depicts the Royal couples last night together in the Scottish mountains before she departs north for Kildrummy, while Robert plans to head further west to the remote islands of the Hebrides, hoping to win support in the war against his Scottish and English enemies from the so-far uncommitted Angus Óg MacDonald, the Lord of the Isles.
As the Royal couple watched the glorious highland sunset could they have had any inkling they would not be together again until eight long weary years of savage warfare had passed?
The 54mm Bruce figure is from Pegaso Models and Elizabeth is an ancient Phoenix casting that dates back to the early-1970's.
Unfortunately I can't do the planned follow-up diorama as yet. I don't expect to get my hands on the additional figure I've earmarked for it until end of January, earliest, and the scene just won't work without that particular character. Which is a bit of a drag.
Cheers the Noo
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