Robert Bruce: And the Community of the Realm of Scotland

G.W.S. Barrow’s Robert Bruce and the Community of the Realm of Scotland has long been recognized as a landmark study of both a pivotal monarch and the constitutional idea that underpinned Scotland’s survival as a polity in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Rather than presenting Bruce as a solitary hero, Barrow situates him within the matrix of feudal society, factional rivalries, and legal culture that shaped his reign. He argues that Bruce’s achievement cannot be explain...