Elizabeth de Burgh

She was born in Ireland (c. 1284), the daughter of the powerful Richard Óg de Burgh, 2nd Earl of Ulster and his wife, Margarite de Burgh (died 1304). Her father was a close friend of King Edward I of England.

Elizabeth probably met Robert the Bruce, then Earl of Carrick, at the English court, By the time they married in 1302 at Writtle, near Chelmsford, Essex, England Robert was a widower with a young daughter from his first marriage. Elizabeth would have been about 14 years old, and Robert 28.

On 27 March 1306, Robert and Elizabeth were crowned as King and Queen of Scots at Scone. The coronation took place in defiance of the English claims of suzerainty over Scotland after the execution of Sir William Wallace. After his coronation, she is quoted as having said,

Alas, we are but king and queen of the May!

as though anticipating a defeat by Edward I.[2]

After the defeat of the Scots at the Battle of Methven on 19 June 1306, the king sent Elizabeth, his daughter Marjorie by his first marriage, his sisters Mary and Christina to Kildrummy Castle, under the protection of his brother Niall (also known as Nigel).[3]

The ruins of Kildrummy Castle in Aberdeenshire

The English laid siege to the castle containing the royal party. The siege finally succeeded when the English bribed a blacksmith with "all the gold he could carry" to set fire to the grain store. The victors hanged, drew and quartered Niall Bruce,[4] along with all the men from the castle. However, the royal ladies under the escort of the Earl of Atholl had already fled.

They were taken from the sanctuary of St. Duthac at Tain by the Earl of Ross, a supporter of the Comyns, and dispatched to King Edward. He imprisoned Bruce's sister Mary and Isabella MacDuff, Countess of Buchan, in wooden cages erected on the walls of Roxburgh and Berwick castles respectively, and then sent Bruce's nine-year-old daughter Marjorie to the nunnery at Watton.

Elizabeth was held under severe conditions of house arrest in England while Edward still needed aid from her father. The Earl of Atholl was hanged and his head displayed on London Bridge.[5]

She was imprisoned for eight years by the English. From October 1306 to July 1308 she was held at Burstwick-in-Holderness, Yorkshire, where she, only served by two elder women, wrote a letter complaining about her condition (she had only 3 clothes and no headgear or linen bed clothing), before being transferred to Bisham Manor, Berkshire until March 1312. From there, she was moved to Windsor Castle with six attendants and an allowance, where she was held until October 1312, Shaftesbury Abbey, Dorset until March 1313, Barking Abbey, Essex until March 1314, and Rochester Castle, Kent until June 1314. After the Battle of Bannockburn, she was moved to York while prisoner exchange talks took place. At York, she had an audience with King Edward II of England. She was released as part of the ransom for the Earl of Hereford who had been captured after the Battle of Bannockburn on 29 September 1314.[6]

Elizabeth had three children who reached adulthood: Matilda, Margaret, and David (the future king David II of Scotland).[7][8]

Robert Bruce and Elizabeth de Burgh, from the Senton Armorial, National Library of Scotland

Arms of Elisabeth de Burgh

Elizabeth died aged approximately 43 years old, on 27 October 1327 after falling from her horse during a visit to the royal residence at Cullen, Banffshire.[1][9]

Plans were immediately made to transport her body to Dunfermline Abbey in Fife, the resting place of Scottish kings and queens since 1093. As parishioners in Cullen were worried that her remains would not arrive intact they took the step of having her internal organs removed during the embalming process. While some sources claim that her entrails were transported separately to Fife,[9] others state that they were buried in the parish church of Cullen.[10] The parishioners also had Masses said to pray for her soul.[11]

Dunfermline Abbey

Robert in gratitude for the treatment of Elizabeth's body and its return south for burial decreed that a chaplaincy be established at the Auld Kirk of Cullen (parish church of Cullen) and paid in perpetuity the sum of five Scots pounds to have Masses said for the soul of Elizabeth.[1][12][13] Robert's original bequest was augmented by Mary Queen of Scots in 1543 and continued to be paid by different bodies throughout the centuries until changes and loss of records due to local government reform in 1975, led to the stopping of payments.[11] In 2011 the church's minister, the Rev Melvyn Wood applied to the Moray Council to have the tradition re-instated and after a lengthy investigation the Council agree to reinstate the annual payment of £2.10[9] and even agreed to pay for the missed instalments.[11] A prayer is now said in the queen's honour at a Sunday service which also remembers parishioners who have died in the last year.[11]

When Robert died 18 months later his body was laid to rest next to Elizabeth who had been interred in the very centre of the abbey beneath the high altar, in an alabaster tomb decorated with gold leaf.[14] Fragments of the tomb still remain and can be seen in the National Museum of Scotland.[15] The abbey was sacked in 1560 by Calvinists during the Scottish Reformation and the tomb was lost, however King Robert's coffin was rediscovered in 1819 during construction work on the new abbey and Elizabeth's coffin was rediscovered in 1917. Both were re-interred in the new abbey.

Victorian brass plate covering the tomb of Robert Bruce and Elizabeth de Burgh

• Wars of Scottish Independence

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Elizabeth de Burgh.

• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry
• Biography