Rebel King: Bannok Burn

The rebellion continues... By 1314, Robert the Brus has waged a guerilla-style war for eight long years to regain Scotland’s independence from England. During that time he recaptured Scottish castles, one by one, to make the land inhospitable to the English invaders. His brother agreed to a treaty that will remove Stirling Castle from English control with neither siege nor battle...unless the English king relieves the fortress by June 24th. Robert’s hand is dealt. He must meet the English king, Edward II, and his tremendous might on a battlefield south of the citadel, and he knows the winner will take all of Scotland, not just Castle Stirling. In mid-June, King Edward starts the trek north. He has culled knights from among Europe’s finest and hired them to fight for him with the promises of Scottish lands and titles and great wealth...once the battle is won. Included in his twenty-mile-long train are 22,500 trained men and untold tonnage of supplies and arms. Robert, King of Scots, and his ragtag army of fewer than 6,000 men are the only obstacle in the way of the English king’s overwhelming force and sheer determination to enslave the Scots. Meeting on a field of unripe wheat beside a stream called Bannok Burn, the two kings and their armies decide the fates of the generations then standing and their children yet unborn.

Rebel King: Bannok Burn, Book Three

Literature & Fiction

Bruce, Charles Randolph

Genre Fiction

Bruce & Bruce Inc

Robert de Bruce, scion of one of the most noble houses in Scotland, is propelled into rebellion by the "Hammer of the Scots." Edward Plantagenet, king of England, who uses Scotland's inherently unstable clan system to seize power and claim the disunited country as his own.

Rebel King: Hammer of the Scots

Bruce, Carolyn Hale

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

Robert de Bruce, having taken up the crown of Scotland to free his nation from English rule, finds that his throne will be but a figment of his imagination unless he brings the anti-Bruce Magnates and bishops under his peace. Half of Scotland wants him dead, and most of the rest don’t care. He and his small, rag-tag army are alone, under death warrants, and ex-communicated by the Pope. How can they survive the long cold winter?

Rebel King: The Har'ships

Using guerilla warfare, Robert the Bruce, King of Scots, has been successfully keeping England’s army, the most powerful in the European world, from taking over all of Scotland. In June 1313 Robert returns to the mainland after his success in capturing the Isle of Man only to discover that his brother, Lord Edward Bruce, has made a bargain with the Scottish warden of English-held Castle Stirling: if the English do not relieve the castle by mid-summer 1314, the warden will hand Stirling over to the Scots. Robert is furious! Now, King Edward has reason to invade Scotland in force. Elated, the English king sees the agreement as a way to reclaim his dwindling power at home. He uses the time to strengthen his ties with his magnates and draw in the best knights from across Europe with promises of lands, titles, and wealth... once the battle is won. The next June, King Edward brings north 2,500 barded knights and 20,000 men-at-arms to a place called Bannok, and a nearby stream called Bannok Burn. His train “in good order” stretches 20 miles. King Robert has no barded knights and only 5,500 men-at-arms, most of whom are armed with long spears. His only advantages are his cunning, Scots courage, and his arrival at the battlefield before the English. Far from the supposed goal of capturing Castle Stirling or the Scottish crown, Robert knows the battle at Bannok Burn is for Scotland herself.

It all started and ended in the month of August, 1388. The sons of Bannockburn thought to raid northern England, forcing London to pay attention to their demands for Scottish independence, which was the same reason their famous ancestors had raided there in 1314. King Richard II of England was the grandchild of Edward III, he being the one who had placed Scotland’s freedom on the executioner’s block and chopped it off after King Robert the Bruce and James Douglas and many, many more great patriots had won that freedom in 1328. What became the battle of Otterburn began as an idealistic punitive raid on the part of the Scots into northern England. But nobody was counting on the impetuousness of England’s Lord Henry “Hotspur” Percy and his brother, Ralph. They had other ideas that turned the Scottish raid into a major hand-to-hand battle fought for the whole of the night by the light of the full moon. The successful raid, the subterfuge to protect the plunder and the subsequent battle of unusual proportions spawned diverse consequences unimagined by any of the participants. But the various historical records will attest to the base and content of this novel and will forever be an important part of our Scottish and English heritage despite those who would rather have it hidden.

Games of Otterburn 1388

Rebel King -The Last High King, is a book about an exciting and terrible time in history you will be close by to what happened in Scotland, Ireland, and to some extent England after the defeat of the mighty English army at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314 by the far lesser forces of the Scottish army. In 1315, Robert the Bruce allies with his father-in-law Richard de Burgh, also known as the “Red Earl” of Ulster with the plan to set Richard on the Irish High King throne by combining forces with the Celtic-Irish and the Anglo-Irish to free the once sovereign state of Ireland from the oppressive English that had occupied that country since old Viking days. King Robert dispatched his brother Edward with 450 seasoned Scots and galloglass warriors to join Richard and his Anglo-Irish barons to begin the campaign. Daringly Edward turned the tables on Richard in one swift movement and then allied himself with the powerful King of Tyrone, Domnall O’Neil. Meanwhile, in London. Earl Thomas Plantagenet of Lancaster and five other earldoms coveted his cousin’s English crown and so politically maneuvered to strip King Edward of England, from much of his royal power, virtually turning him into a toothless lion. By 1318, tens of thousands of Scots, Irish and English lost their lives fighting each other and fighting for scarce food resources at the onset of the devastating “Little Ice Age”. What did grow then was stunted and meager eventually leaving the domesticated animals dead and consequently many people to suffer at the very hand of Mother Nature, herself.

Rebel King: The Last High King

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