GREAT MEN'S BODIES
excelled by Wallace both in stature and in bodily strength; For in wrestling Wallace could overcome two such men as Bruce was."—Constable's Table Misc.
ROBERT THE BRUCE (1274–1329 A. D.)
The most heroic of the Scottish Kings; at twenty-two as Earl of Carrick he swore fealty to Edward I.; soon after with his men, joined the cause of Scotch independence, retiring after the English had won; next made one of the four Regents who ruled the Kingdom. "In less than two years, he wrested from England nearly the whole of Scotland." As soon as Edward III. came to the throne, hostilities again commenced, resulting in the Scots being again victorious and a final treaty being made at Northampton, recognizing the independence of Scotland and Bruce's right to the throne. Dying at fifty -five; his heart, embalmed, was taken to Palestine and buried in Jerusalem, and was afterwards dug up and buried at Melrose, Scotland.
We have just heard how his body compared with the great Wallace's.
Sir Herbert Maxwell quotes the Historia Majoris Britanniae thus: "His figure was graceful and athletic, with broad shoulders; his features were handsome; he had the yellow hair of the Northern race, with blue and sparkling eyes, his intellect was quick; and he had the gift of fluent speech in the vernacular delightful to listen to.… Supposing the remains exhumed at Dunfermline to have been King Robert's, which is very far from improbable; he must have stood about six feet high. In days when deeds of arms formed as much of the every-day life of gentlemen as politics do their modern counterparts; the union of a powerful body with a strong intellect was sure to bring a man to distinction; provided he escaped a violent death on the field or on the scaffold."
"Robert the Bruce was a remarkably brave and strong
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