“We have been”, is the proud motto of the Bruces, whose most famous son was the great warrior king Robert the Bruce, who achieved a glorious and decisive victory over the cream of English chivalry at the battle of Bannockburn in 1314. It was through the marriage of one of his descendants, Marjory, to Walter Fitz Alan, the Lord High Steward of Scotland, that the ultimately ill-fated Royal House of Stuart was born, while an indissoluble link between the Bruces and the Stuarts survives and flourishes to this day. Many of the name have gained high honours and distinction – no less so than James Bruce, born in Kinnaird House, Stirlingshire, in 1730 and nicknamed ‘the Abyssinian’, because of his renowned expedition to that country, now Ethiopia, during his search for the source of the River Nile. The truly inspiring tale of the Bruces of both yesteryear and today is chronicled here.
